Office of Sponsored Programs

Contact

General Contact

Office of Sponsored Programs
211 Lyman Hall
315-443-2807
ospoff@syr.edu

Contact by Research Support Area

Find the right contact for your research needs by area of support. Use the directory to connect directly with the appropriate research administrator or staff member for assistance.

What is the Office of Sponsored Programs?

The Office of Sponsored Programs is Syracuse University’s central office for handling external research and creative activity funding. OSP supports faculty, researchers, and other University units in preparing proposals, negotiating awards, and ensuring compliance with sponsor and institutional policies. It serves as the authorized institutional representative for all sponsored funding.

Services and Support Offered

OSP helps researchers at every stage of externally-funded work. Key services include:

• Proposal Development & Submission
  Assistance with identifying funding opportunities; help with proposal writing, format, and budget building; coordinating required documents such as current & pending support, biographies, institutional approvals, and forms certifying legal and regulatory compliance.
• Budget Review & Cost Principles
  Checking that costs are allowable, reasonable, allocable, and consistently treated; ensuring correct rates (sponsor & university), that effort is properly included; justifying equipment, cost sharing, and indirect (F&A) costs; ensuring mathematical and form correctness.
• Award Negotiation & Set-Up
  Negotiating terms and conditions; making sure compliance requirements (human subjects, animal care, biosafety, environmental safety, export controls) are in place; collaborating with financial offices to establish project accounts (chartstrings), and managing requests for forward funding or starting expenditures before award execution.
• Award Management, Modification & Close-out
  Monitoring sponsor and University obligations; approving post-award modifications such as rebudgeting, changes of scope or PI, effort reductions, no cost extensions, etc.; overseeing subrecipient/consultant agreements; ensuring required reports are submitted; and leading the close-out process in both technical, financial, and administrative dimensions.
• Compliance & Risk Review
  Checking proposals and awards for regulatory, institutional, and sponsor compliance. This includes verifying disclosures of financial conflicts of interest, ensuring proper approvals for human or animal research, biosafety, export control, etc., and making sure institutional policies are followed.
• Templates, Policies, Resources
  OSP provides templates, checklists, training materials, proposal guidelines, forms, and standard operating procedures to ensure consistency and efficiency in proposal and award processes.

OSP’s Key Responsibilities

To fulfill our mission and help ensure that applications comply with sponsor’s requirements and that award’s conditions are adhered to:

Proposal Development and Submission 

• Assist with identification of possible funding opportunities
• Facilitate development of current and pending reports
• Confirm PI/co-PI eligibility
• Review and approve budgets:
  • University and sponsor rates are appropriately and properly used
  • Budgets are arithmetically correct
  • Costs presented are allowable, reasonable, allocable and consistently treated
  • Effort of key personnel properly included
  • Inadvertent or unnecessary cost sharing
  • Equipment requests adequately justified
  • Rate-based costs properly authorized
• Ensure commitments from external collaborators are properly documented
• Review proposals for adherence to sponsor’s requirements; e.g. page limits, font type and size, margins, mandatory components, etc.
• Review named personnel/institutions for debarment/suspension
• Confirm currency of annual disclosures of financial interests
• Confirm provision of fully signed Internal Routing & Review form and certain data elements
• Confirm inclusion research involving human or animal subjects or biosafety considerations
• Maintain online certifications and representations
• Ensure that award terms and conditions are acceptable to the University and consistent with our fundamental principles
• Negotiate and execute teaming agreements required for project collaboration
• Authorize proposals submitted and certify and assure that SU will adhere to terms and conditions of award

Award Negotiation and Set-up

• Submit revised budgets and modified work plans
• Ensure that all compliance requirements for the awarded project are obtained, e.g., human or animal research subject approvals in place and congruence evaluations completed; all training or licenses in place for environment safety requirements, etc.
• Negotiate terms and conditions to align with faculty and University interests
• Collaborate with Office of Sponsored Accounting to ensure efficient and proper creation of award and chartstring in University’s financial system
• Review, approve and process forward funding or pre-award expenditure requests

Award Management and Close-out

• Evaluate subrecipient’s for performance risk to determine proper award mechanism
• Negotiate and execute subaward and consultant agreements
• Monitor subrecipient adherence to award terms and conditions
• Monitor PI adherence to programmatic reporting requirements
• Authorize expenditures requiring OSP prior approval
• Review and process prior-approvals required by award, e.g.,
  • Change in scope
  • Change in PI
  • Reductions in effort > 25% or more
  • Absences from campus for period of 90 days or more
  • Budget modifications between budget lines or between direct and indirect costs
  • Costs ordinarily unallowable as direct costs
  • Equipment acquisition
  • Extra service requests
  • Subawards
  • Carry forward  requests
  • Foreign travel
  • No cost extensions
  • Conduct close-out reviews to ensure that programmatic, technical and financial obligations have been met by SU and all subawards
  • Notify PI’s and support staff of record retention requirements

Other related activities

• Negotiate and execute Materials Transfer Agreements, Non-Disclosure Agreements and other legal instruments associated with sponsored programs

How to Work with OSP

• When to Contact OSP: As early as possible—ideally when a funding idea or opportunity is identified. Early involvement helps with planning, budget accuracy, and avoiding last-minute compliance or format issues.
• Proposal Approval Form (PAF): Researchers must submit an internal routing form summarizing key proposal elements (budget, effort, cost sharing, certifications) by the internal deadline.
• Communication: Coordinate with your assigned OSP Research Administrator (each department/school has one) for personalized help.