Proposal Routing and Submission FAQs

1. Why is routing necessary?
All sponsored project proposals, awards, fellowships, and sub-contracts and contractual agreements linked to sponsored projects must be reviewed by SJSU’s authorized signers to ensure institutional eligibility, conformity to sponsor guidelines, accuracy of budget, applicability of cost sharing, compliance approvals, etc. Proposals are reviewed to ensure that any commitments included are consistent with federal, state and university policies, as well as to ascertain approval of the proposal by department chairs and deans. It also serves to indemnify the faculty member should the agency dispute the quality or quantity of the award’s deliverable.

2. Does preliminary proposal and letter of intent require routing?
If university resources (i.e. release time, cost-share, facilities usage) are being proposed, then the preliminary proposal must be routed for SJSU’s authorized signers’ approval.

3. Why does the routing process take at least seven days to complete?
There are at least seven signers for each submitted proposal. Each signer requests at least one working day in order to review a proposal. Each signer approves different areas of the proposal:

• Faculty Member (Principal Investigator) - acknowledges that they are committing to the work as written in the narrative and as specified in the budget; ensures that the project will comply with sponsor’s requirements.

• Department Chairs - acknowledge they can accommodate the faculty's proposed release and overload time, work load, teaching requests, curriculum impact, departmental resources, and financial requirements (i.e. cost share).

• Deans - acknowledge they can accommodate the faculty's proposed release and overload time work load/teaching requests, curriculum impact, college resources, and financial requirements (i.e. cost-share, space). Because budget constraints or commitments fall directly to them and their colleges, the deans have to be vigilant about the potential impact of the proposal on their colleges’ resources.

• Research Foundation Personnel - the OSP manager of the proposal and director of OSP of SJSURF has to ensure that all funder guidelines are met and consistent with all rules and regulations since SJSURF is the legal entity that is responsible for all the compliance requirements that are required by federal, state, local laws and sponsor requirements.

• VP for Administration and Finance- ensures that all CSU regulations are followed, the financial obligations is sensible and are possible for SJSU, and ensures all facility issues are in order (i.e. additional space, modification of facility).

• Chief Research Officer, who is the president's designee for approval of all proposals that are being submitted by SJSU. The current designee is the AVP of Research - ensures that all rules and regulations are followed, including human and animal subjects. The AVP for Research also will not approve of the proposal unless all of the above signers have approved the submission.

4. What documents are required for routing?
Final budget and justification, and a “close to final” scope of work are required for routing. Please note that the AVP for Research requires all final documents for final review and submission three days prior to the sponsor’s mandated submission date. Chairs and deans may also have specific routing requirements. In some cases deans and chairs may require the full proposal for the routing. We will need to adhere to their requirements if different from those of SJSURF.

5. Why do I have to certify compliance issues on routing?
The certifying questions are there to ensure that the principal investigator is aware of various issues that may not be included in the proposal narrative, but are presented in the project. If any of the compliance questions are answered “yes”, then additional actions or documentation maybe required prior to completing the routing process (i.e. cost share, IRB, IACUC).

6. Can I make changes to the proposal once the routing process started?
The budget and justification must be finalized prior to routing. Minor fixes such as grammar, formatting, are permitted as long as overall scope of work does not change.

7. My proposal is due in two days, and I haven’t started the proposal process, will my proposal be submitted?
When notifying your sponsored programs manager with less than 7-10 working days prior to the sponsor deadline, your proposal will be considered a RUSH proposal.

This will affect the timeline significantly. Prior to proceeding with your proposal, you will need to talk with your chair and dean regarding the situation and your intent to submit.

While the Research Foundation will do their best to work with you on the proposal process, it is not guaranteed that the proposal will be submitted by the sponsor’s deadline. All factors of the timeline will need to be executed in just two days. Please note that when entering a RUSH situation, your sponsored programs manager will need to put existing proposals/projects on hold, in order to meet the deadline for your proposal. All proposal documents and budgets will need to be provided to your sponsored programs manager no later than 12:00 p.m. on the day they are notified of the proposal. Documents received later than this time, are not guaranteed submission and approval to submit.

It is recommended that you consider submitting during the next proposal cycle. This will allow sufficient time to obtain required approvals and will help to produce a higher quality proposal.