On July 5, the final phase of the UFIRST implementation will be complete when the awards module of the system is launched. This final phase of the UFIRST implementation reflects an increased synergy and partnership between the Division of Sponsored Programs and the Contracts and Grants Office, both of which are now housed together under the Office of Research.

While the requirements for departments to provide essential data about new and modifications to awards are the same, research administrators will now enter this information directly into UFIRST rather than emailing this information to DSP Awards.

RSH282, the UFIRST Awards training course, is available beginning this month. Register now to attend one of the many scheduled sessions beginning June 2.

Please note that users may experience some slowness during the weekend hours of July 2-4 as the Office of Research loads in all active awards, but at no time will UFIRST proposals be unavailable.

Some additional items to note:

• For all new awards set up after July 5, the current Award Compliance Form will be available via UFIRST. Principal investigators will be required to log into UFIRST to complete this form.
• In addition, the Conflict of Interest portion of this form is moving into UFIRST.  All key personnel on each award must certify their outside activities related to each award in UFIRST.
• A new “Viewer” role will be introduced that will provide increased transparency and ease of access to information. The new common workspace will ensure more accurate record-keeping and the elimination of the need to rekey information in the myUFL system, with the expectation of a reduction in discrepancies.

In an effort to significantly improve the way it administers research, the Office of Research introduced the University of Florida Integrated Research Support Tool—or UFIRST—in the spring of 2015.

If you have questions or concerns, please email ufirst@research.ufl.edu.

Two words that should usually be avoided by applicants in preparing their grant applications are “If” and “Whether.” The primary problem with their use is that they both provide opportunities for a negative outcome to occur.

While it is certainly possible that either a positive or an alternative outcome might be beneficial, in many cases, the negative outcome leads to a “dead end” in a line of work or progression of activities.

It is critical that applicants summarize the expectations for what will be accomplished (the “deliverables”) at the completion of any series of activities or experiments that are described in the proposal, as well as what the potential importance of those outcomes would be. In efforts to exercise caution in describing projected outcomes, applicants may be tempted to write something along the lines of “If successful, these studies would provide new opportunities to………”

The problem with such a phrase is that it immediately conjures up the thought among the reviewers of “Well, what if not?” which, of course, has the potential to instill doubt in the mind of reviewer as to whether the applicant him/herself has confidence in the outcomes of the projected studies. In addition, if not successful, the conclusion would seem to be that such opportunities would not exist.

A potentially straightforward way to avoid this problem would be to rephrase this in the positive using the subjunctive verb tense. For example, “Our ability to provide strong evidence of the importance of our expected findings would provide new opportunities to …….”

With this strategy, the applicant would not be guaranteeing that proposed activities would be successful but simply that such success would be likely to have a significant positive impact from the perspective of the all-important mission of the funding agency.

Excerpted from Grant Writers’ Seminars & Workshops (GWSW) Blog.

To view specific examples of tips and strategies from various versions of the GWSW The Grant Application Writer’s Workbook, visit the Workbooks page and click the link for the specific workbook of interest to you.