Federal and other sponsors require institutions receiving financial support to adopt policies and practices to ensure adequate stewardship of resources, ethical and reasonable conduct, proper respect and concern for societal issues, and adequate safety and protections. The responsibilities for compliance may be divided among three categories within the Institution:

1. Those that apply to the Institution as a whole irrespective of sponsored programs, i.e. affirmative action or occupational safety,
2. Those that entail accounting and fiscal responsibilities with respect to sponsored programs, i.e. accounting standards, or audit requirements, and
3. Those that entail special ethical or safety considerations related to the conduct of research, i.e. human subjects research, use of animals, radiation safety, etc. The policies of Responsible Conduct in Research (RCR) help to guide these responsibilities.

Responsibilities in Category 1 are spread throughout the Institution, depending upon the particular compliance issue.

Our Grants and Contracts Office assumes much of the responsibility in Category 2. However, program administrators and Principal Investigators (PIs) or Program Directors (PDs) must assume primary fiscal responsibility for the appropriateness of all charges.

Oversight for the issues in Category 3 includes mandated committees such as the Institutional Review Board (IRB), the Institutional Animal Care and Use Committee (IACUC), and others, but responsibility, ultimately, falls on PIs and PDs to get the appropriate reviews, approvals and permits.

UAA Compliance Committees

The following committees deal with research requirements in their respective area (see links on the left):

• Institutional Review Board (IRB) [Human Subjects]
• Institutional Animal Care and Use Committee (IACUC)
• Responsible Conduct of Research Committee (RCR)
  
• Biosafety Committee
• Radiation Safety Committee
• Chemical Safety Committee
• Native American Graves Protection and Repatriation Act (NAGPRA) Committee
  
  The Research Compliance Administrator also works closely with the Environmental Health and Safety/Risk Management Support program to ensure lab safety and other areas of research site compliance.  For information involving lab safety etc., see the website for Environmental Health and Safety/Risk Management Support for safety data sheets and other useful links.

Click here for the Research Compliance organization chart (last updated February 2012).