coe-staff: Announcement: Assistant VP for Research Facilities

[Emily Tanner-Smith]

Dear COE faculty and staff,
Please see the announcement below from David Conover, Vice President for Research and Innovation, announcing Fred Sabb as the new Assistant Vice President for Research Facilities.
Best wishes,
Emily

From: David Conover <dconover at uoregon.edu>
Sent: Wednesday, August 7, 2019 11:56 AM
Subject: Announcement: Assistant VP for Research Facilities

Please Circulate to your Faculty

Dear Colleagues,

In early June I announced my plan for restructuring the executive team that supports the operations of OVPRI (see below). The plan includes two Assistant/Associate Vice President positions that represent a reprogramming of existing roles, responsibilities, and positions on my executive team without a net increase in FTEs.  This new executive team administrative structure is designed to better meet the needs of our faculty as our research and innovation enterprise expands while also adapting to a rapidly changing federal regulatory environment.

I am thrilled to announce that the first of these two positions, the Assistant VP for Research Facilities, will be filled by Dr. Fred Sabb.  Fred is the director of the Lewis Center for Neuroimaging (LCNI). His research focuses on using clinical cognitive neuroscience and neuroinformatics to elucidate the neurobiological origins of mental health and illness. Prior to coming to the UO in 2014, he was an Assistant Professor at UCLA, where he also received his Ph.D., and Assistant Director of the Staglin Center for Cognitive Neuroscience MRI Facility. Fred has received numerous awards including the Semel Scholar Award in 2008 and NARSAD Young Investigator Grantee in 2008-2010. His work is highly collaborative and he is an active co-PI with UO faculty on NSF and NIMH grant-funded research.

Over the last 18 months, Fred has also served on the VPRI Executive Team as Senior Advisor for Research Implementation and in that capacity he has played a critical role in advancing many aspects of the OVPRI Strategic Plan including: 1) the implementation of the task force recommendations on core facility operations, especially the difficult work of implementing processes that increase accountability and efficiency in our core facility network; 2) staffing our Research Development Services (RDS) office during a 3.5 month gap in leadership; 3) overseeing the project team responsible for planning our eventual transition to integrated Electronic Research Administration (ERA) software;  4) the ongoing refresh of the OVPRI website; and 5) the fulfillment of the OVPRI Diversity Action Plan (DAP). Fred's outstanding contributions to all these endeavors combined with his research experience and leadership as Director of LCNI gives me high confidence that he is highly qualified to lead OVPRI's research facilities portfolio.

Having an AVP for Research Facilities is a new leadership position within OVPRI as well as for Fred. Based on the recommendations of the search committee and consultations with Fred, the following transition plan will be in effect. Fred's initial term appointment will be at 0.75 FTE while the remainder of his effort will be devoted to LCNI and his ongoing research grants. Meanwhile, an Associate Director for LCNI will be named to take over its day-to-day operations. At the end of the first year, Fred and OVPRI will evaluate the working of this new arrangement including in that process feedback from core facility directors and faculty. I will then consider what adjustments may need to be made.

I am extremely grateful to Fred for his willingness to take on this new role. Fred believes fiercely, as do I, in the absolute necessity of world-class and highly accessible facilities to support the cutting-edge research of our faculty and the training of our students. For that reason, the AVP for Research Facilities will report directly to the VPRI. I look forward to working closely with Fred as we continue to advance the quality and quantity of our research facilities. I also want to thank the members of the search committee for their sage advice including Leslie Leve, Tim Mason, Cris Niell, and Mike Pluth.

Regards,
David

David O. Conover, PhD
Vice President for Research and Innovation
Professor of Biology
University of Oregon
dconover at uoregon.edu<mailto:dconover at uoregon.edu>
541-346-2090



Dear Colleagues:

I am writing to let you know about several upcoming changes in the OVPRI executive leadership team. These changes anticipate and are necessitated by a changing landscape affecting research operations at the UO and beyond. First, our sponsored research volume is poised for unprecedented increases in the coming years. For example, new awards received so far this year are 53% higher than all of FY 19 with one month yet to go in FY 20. This increase indicates that expenditures will be rising substantially in the coming years. On top of that, the new Knight Campus faculty begin arriving this fall with many more to arrive after the building opens next year. Many of these faculty bring established and funded research programs, which will generate more research and innovation activity as well as the expansion of research core facilities. Second, the regulatory environment is changing dramatically. Heightened concerns about foreign espionage and theft of IP is requiring increased focus on export control, cybersecurity, and disclosure of international affiliations. To accommodate these changes, we are undertaking a reorganization of the OVPRI's executive team in several different ways.

First, with the maturing network of research core facilities, the expansions underway in collaboration with the Knight Campus, and the implementation of last year's task force recommendations, it is time to bring the research core facilities under unified oversight. I am creating a new Assistant Vice President for Research Facilities position. This position will be primarily responsible for oversight of all research core facilities.

Second, as research administration has become more complex, and our volume of activity grows, the responsibilities for oversight of research operations also expand. Soon after I arrived in 2016, our then Chief of Staff moved to the Knight Campus and I chose to replace that position with a Sr. Assoc. VP who was an experienced researcher, had faculty status, and was capable of stepping in if and when the VPRI was unavailable. The new model has been successful especially given the multiple special research initiatives which the UO has launched within the past two years. But it has placed too much of a burden on the Sr. Assoc. VP to also be the "go to" person with respect to operations.

To fill this gap, I am creating a new position of Associate Vice President for Research Operations whose duties will involve business, compliance, and regulatory functions and cross training in other areas so that future gaps, when they occur, can be plugged more easily. These changes better represent the current and future needs of OVPRI, will distribute responsibilities for operations in a more balanced fashion, and make us more resilient to unanticipated events.

Both of these new positions will be filled through a search process.

Because of the current budget challenges facing the UO, the restructuring described above must be implemented without a net increase in FTE. To be clear, this restructuring is aimed to increase the effectiveness of research administration that serves our faculty. Over time, the several partial FTEs that now provide oversight of core facilities via multiple faculty/staff on the OVPRI Executive Team will be combined into the single new AVP position focused on core facilities. We will continue to engage research active faculty on the Executive Team but at a lower FTE and with a focus more on special projects and initiatives and less on operations. In addition, I will be discontinuing the Assistant Vice President for Business Administration position. The duties of that position will be distributed among the new positions described above as well as among other staff in the division.

Finally, I want to share my excitement about our future. Research at the UO is on a steeply ascending curve and our office is committed to continuing to support faculty research and success on campus. Restructuring our Executive Team will prepare us well for the opportunities and challenges ahead.

Thank you for all you do to support research at the UO.

Regards,
David

David O. Conover, PhD
Vice President for Research and Innovation
Professor of Biology
1266 University of Oregon
Eugene, OR 97403-1266
dconover at uoregon.edu<mailto:dconover at uoregon.edu>

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