Graduate students may occasionally seek external funding in the form of fellowships or sponsored research grants. If a grant opportunity will be awarded/issued to Harvard University and/or require institutional authorization, it must be reviewed by Harvard’s Office of Sponsored Programs prior to submission to the sponsor. This process does not apply to grant awards that will be paid directly to the student and do not require Harvard to receive and/or manage the funds. Students seeking sponsored funding (to be received and/or managed by Harvard) must work with the Associate Director of Finance to ensure that this approval is in placebefore submission. Fellowship opportunities that will be issued directly to the graduate student do not require institutional sign-off and may be submitted directly to the sponsor by the student without internal review. If unsure, please contact the Associate Director of Finance for guidance.
In cases where the grant funds are to be received by and managed at Harvard, Graduate Students must contact the Department’s Finance team as soon as possible, but no later than two weeks prior to the sponsor’s application deadline (three weeks for federal applications). They must submit all proposal files to the Finance Team no later than 8 full business days prior to submission. This includes the following documents:
- Sponsor guidelines
- All proposal files that will be submitted to the sponsor
- If applicable, a print-out of the proposal in the sponsor portal (saved, NOT submitted)
- Project title and dates
- Name of faculty mentor/PI and letter of support (see below: RE PI status)
- A budget
- A budget justification
- Harvard’s International Activities form
This timeframe is required to secure the Letter of Institutional Support, or the appropriate institutional authorization required prior to submission. It will allow our Finance team to receive and review all pertinent documentation, consult with FAS/Harvard leadership as needed, and enter the proposal information into the appropriate Harvard system to comply with the University’s 5-business days Proposal Submission Deadline.
The Two Week Time Frame Explained
- Department’s Review (beginning 8 full business days prior to sponsor due date): The Department’s finance team will work with the grant applicant to collect and process their grant proposal prior to Harvard’s Internal Review. This includes:
- Collecting proposal/project information and related documents, reviewing for compliance with department, university, and sponsored policies, requesting revisions as needed.
- Entering the project’s information into the relevant Harvard systems.
- Consulting with Harvard’s Sponsored Research team, Dean’s office, and other related leaders across FAS/Harvard.
- Performing other administrative aspects to facilitate Harvard’s review.
- Harvard’s Internal Review (beginning 5 full business days prior to sponsor due date): During this review period, the complete and final proposal is reviewed by Harvard’s Office for Sponsored Programs for institutional and federal/state policy compliance.
Sponsor’s Due Date
Sponsor’s Due Date: the sponsor’s due date is defined as the date and time after which the sponsor will no longer accept proposals. In cases in which Harvard is a subcontractor, the sponsor’s due date will be determined by the submitting institution. Please note:
- For the purpose of the five-day policy, the sponsor due date is considered Day Zero. For example, if your project due date falls on a Thursday, the OSP deadline (Day 5) would be the previous Thursday at 9:00 a.m. The departmental deadline (Day 8) would be three days sooner, Monday at 9:00 a.m.
- University holidays are not counted as business days. If the due date falls near a holiday, we must account for this and add additional time to the review countdown.
- If the sponsor has a submission time earlier than 5:00 p.m. ET, we should consider the “sponsor due date” to be the day prior to the published date. This will ensure OSP has a full five days for their review period.
If Harvard internal deadlines are not met and the submitting office does not have sufficient time for a thorough review, the proposal will not be submitted.
Principal Investigator (PI) Role
Principal Investigator role (PI role): Students seeking sponsored funding must identify and secure support from a Harvard faculty willing to serve in the PI role. Students are not eligible to serve as PI or Co-PI on research grants (with few exceptions, such as NSF doctoral dissertation projects). They should instead be named as Co-Investigator.
Faculty PIs are responsible for knowing and understanding the submission deadline under this policy and should not agree to serve as PI if the proposal submission deadline falls outside of the two-week period needed for the institutional reviews.
Normally, Faculty PIs are responsible for engaging research administrators in their Schools as early in the process as possible and for preparing proposal narratives and other required documentation in advance to allow adequate review. In the case of student-led proposals, where students are serving as Co-investigators, Gov requires students to provide their Faculty PIs with advance copies of proposal narratives and other required documents. This will make it easier for the Faculty PI to know if there are elements of proposals that could necessitate review and approval by the Office of the Provost, the Committee on the Use of Human Subjects, and/or the University Committee on International Projects and Sites (UCIPS).
Faculty PIs and Student Co-Is are required to take the mandatory FAS Training, titled “FAS and SEAS Update for Faculty and Principal Investigators,” which can be found in the Harvard Training Portal. If the sponsor is the NSF or NIH, the PI and Co-I must also take the mandatory OVPR training titled “Disclosing Other Support: Guidance for Faculty and Key Personnel (University-wide),” also found in the HTP.
Key Terms
Contractor (aka Vendor) – Contractor means an entity that receives a contract. A contract is a legal instrument by which a non-federal entity purchases property or services needed to carry out the project or program under a federal award. (Uniform Guidance §200.1 Definitions)
Subaward – Subaward means an award provided by a pass-through entity to a subrecipient for the subrecipient to carry out part of a federal award received by the pass-through entity. It does not include payments to a contractor or payments to an individual that is a beneficiary of a federal program. A subaward may be provided through any form of legal agreement, including an agreement that the pass-through entity considers a contract (Uniform Guidance §200.1 Definitions)
Subrecipient – Subrecipient means a non-federal entity that receives a subaward from a pass-through entity to carry out a part of a federal program; but does not include an individual that is a beneficiary of such program. A subrecipient may also be a recipient of other federal awards directly from a federal awarding agency (Uniform Guidance §200.1 Definitions)