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1. Whose effort must be certified?
Effort must be certified for anyone who works on federal or non-federal sponsored projects. This includes faculty, academic staff, classified staff, graduate students, and postdoctoral trainees who either:
- charge salary to one or more sponsored projects, or
- work on one or more projects without receiving salary support from the sponsor.
For the purposes of effort certification, sponsored projects include those with 133, 142, 143, and 144 fund numbers, EXCEPT gifts (fund 133, document type 2).
2. Who certifies the effort?
Faculty and academic staff certify their own effort. Each principal investigator certifies the effort for the graduate students, postdoctoral trainees, and non-PI classified staff who work on his or her sponsored projects.
3. What happens after the faculty member, academic staff member, or PI certifies the effort?
An effort coordinator must review the certification. The purpose of this review is to (a) determine whether the certification is consistent with University policy and with the reality of the situation as they understand it, and (b) identify any follow-up actions that may be required.
4. Which effort coordinator reviews and processes the certification?
The effort coordinator for the individual's home department, from a Human Resources / University Appointment point of view. For example, Joe Smith has an appointment in Department A. He works on projects that are managed by Department A and Department B. The effort coordinator for Department A processes Joe's effort statement. In all cases, one effort coordinator reviews and processes the effort statement.
Some individuals have appointments in more than one department. For each individual in the ECRT system, a primary department has been assigned. The ECRT primary department determines which effort coordinator will process an individual's effort statement. Primary department assignments are based on appointment data, but the data available to the RSP team does not always let us conclusively identify the "correct" primary department. In addition, researchers and administrators may recognize situations where the best person to process the effort statement is not the effort coordinator for the individual's home department. When this is the case, the individual's assigned "primary department" in ECRT can be changed, and the "right" effort coordinator can process the statement.
5. I'm trying to figure out where the effort coordinators will be needed in my college/school, and whom to assign as the effort coordinator for each organizational unit. How do I do this?
In the ECRT system, the RSP team needs to assign someone to serve as the effort coordinator for each organizational unit in which people hold appointments. The RSP team has produced lists of these organizational units for each college and school. For each organizational unit:
- If there is an obvious choice for the person to serve as effort coordinator, please indicate that person on the list.
- If there is not an obvious choice, please identify someone in your college or school who can serve in the effort coordinator role for that organizational unit. For example, you may have a subdepartment in which three people have appointments (and work on sponsored projects). If this subdepartment doesn't have its own administrator, you may wish to:
- have a coordinator in another unit process the statements for these three individuals too, or
- identify a person to serve as the effort coordinator for every unit in your college/school that doesn't have its own obvious choice for someone to fulfill that role.
Currently, RSP is collecting the names of people who will serve as effort coordinators. If you haven't already sent your information to RSP and you need another copy of your list, please send a request to effort@rsp.wisc.edu.
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