New-IAF-Memo

							                                  Memorandum:
      Institution of and rationale for a revised Internal Approval Form (IAF)


Sent: 5/31/12 4:30 PM
To: all-facstaff@usm.edu
Subject: The University’s new Internal Approval Form (in re external funding)

To all Faculty and Staff:

Following a thorough process that included: research into best practices and new
federal agency regulations, several stages of review by faculty and administrators, and
numerous revisions, a new Internal Approval Form (IAF) for use in conjunction with
the preparation of applications for external funding is now available on Sponsored
Programs Administration’s (SPA) “Forms and Budget” Web page
(http://www.usm.edu/spa/forms-budget/forms-budget.html).

At present, use of the new IAF is optional, but it will be required at the beginning of
the new fiscal year, on July 1, 2012.

The new form, at about 5 pages, is 3 pages longer than the current IAF — but grant
applicants may be assured that its every item was deemed necessary to ensure
compliance with government regulations and funding-agency requirements, to protect
the University from unnecessary legal or civil liabilities, and to ensure that pertinent
personnel are informed about what University resources a particular funded project
will require. Because of the new IAF’s increased length and complexity, the group
tasked with producing it wrote instructions to accompany it. A link to the instructions
appears under the new IAF link on the SPA Forms and Budget page.

After having worked with both MS Word and Adobe PDF formats, the IAF task group
ultimately chose to present the new IAF in MS Word 2007 format (docx) because
Word’s forms software proved to be the more agile and flexible. Users might want to
note that the docx form will automatically become longer if more text is typed into
some of the text fields (boxes) than the fields’ initial size can accommodate. Because
the instructions are keyed to IAF page numbers, they might not match exactly if the
form has lengthened while being filled out.

To download the new IAF, click “Internal Approval Form—New” on the Forms and
Budget page, or use this URL directly: http://www.usm.edu/spa/forms-
budget/forms/IAF_2012-05-30.docx. Likewise, click the “Instructions …” link or use
this URL to download directly: http://www.usm.edu/spa/forms-budget/forms/IAF-
Instructions_2012-05-31.doc.

Sponsored Programs Administration
www.usm.edu/spa