InterAC Research Meeting –
Interaction and Acceleration of Research
MINUTES
Tuesday, June 24, 2014, 4:00 – 5:00 p.m.
Biotech Place
Attending: Drs. Bleecker, Daniel, Diz, Dubey, Feldman, Harrison, Kaplan, Kucera, Bruce King, Kritchevsky, Langefeld, Meyers, Pasche, Wagenknecht and Xu, Ms. Gibson, Ms. Hooker, Ms. Joyner, Mr. Kennedy, Ms. Klein, Ms. McClellan, Mr. Tom Eaton, Ms. Molloy, Ms. Muday, Mr. Nolan, Ms. Pranke, Ms. Rankin, Ms. Russell, Mr. Ken Russell, Ms. Smith, Ms. Tiernan and Ms. Karen Loy (recorder)
Business Topics:
Dr. Kaplan called the meeting to order at 4:00 p.m. and requested a motion to approve the minutes for May 27, 2014. A motion was made by Ms. Rankin and seconded by Ms. McClellan; all in favor, none opposed. Any subsequent changes to the minutes should be sent to Ms. Molloy.
Reminders:
Center Director Annual reviews and strategic discussions are being scheduled during September. These meetings will review each Center’s progress toward goals during fiscal year 2014, and will set strategic priorities for fiscal years 2015-16. Data for the reviews will not be available until mid-August, but Ms. Molloy would be glad to meet with Center directors to go over standard metrics and/or narrative templates, or to review goals in preparation for these reviews.
Ms. Molloy will be scheduling a preparation meeting with each Core Director in October to discuss the feedback memo from last year, assess progress toward goals, and review volume and financial activity to see if there are issues to be addressed before the January application process begins.
Presentations:
Academic Financial Update
Terry L. Hales, Jr., CPA, MBA, Vice President, Academic Administration and Operations gave the academic financial update. He provided a general financial overview, a review of fiscal year 2014 (FY14) projected year-end actual performance, and described development of the fiscal year 2015 (FY15) budget.
The academic mission is approximately a $250M business with two distinct components, 60% restricted (designated grants, contracts, and gifts) and 40% unrestricted funds. The institution has limited sources of revenue to support the academic mission, which typically includes tuition, interest income, research direct and indirect funds, gifts, and patent income.
The year-end FY14 actual results are expected to be an operating loss of $3.2M – $3.8M, compared to a budgeted loss of $2.5M, which is close to the approved budget. The FY15 academic budget projects revenues of $243M and expenses of $253M, for a net loss of $9.8M. This deficit is driven by the projected $10.5M of strategic investment during FY15. The academic mission will be expected to manage to a break-even operational budget (net of the $10.5M strategic investments).
Questions for Mr. Hales
1. What is the endowment? What does the increased endowment spending mean, and how is it determined what percentage of the endowment is spent each year?
a. The endowment consists of the restricted endowment (third-party gift with use restricted for a very specific purpose) and the quasi-endowment (where internal funds were set aside and restricted by leadership to use for a specific purpose).
b. The distribution rate is 5.3% ($18M annually); the remaining earnings are reinvested in the endowment funds. In FY12 and FY13, we deployed $9M of that $18M. The budget for FY15 plans to use approximately $8M for their designated purposes.
2. What is included in the strategic package budget? Does it include replacements for chairs who left unexpectedly or positions that have been open for a while?
a. Yes, leadership position replacements are included in the package projection if they were known by May 2014. In addition to chair replacements, key areas of planned strategic spend include investments in cancer, diabetes, gerontology, comparative effectiveness, public health sciences, and physiology and pharmacology.
3. Is it possible for Centers to roll over unused portions of their institutional budget allocations to the following year?
a. No. Every year stands on its own when it comes to institutional budget allocations.
4. Why is there not a 1:3 match for extramural funds paid through the fee-for-service structure that support core faculty?
a. Examples were given for the fees paid to cover salary for critical services provided, funds that are from extramural sources but flow through the 110 category funds, etc. The match is needed to cover the pre-award consulting and design work for services planned to come from the cores.
b. Due to additional questions and interest in this issue, it was decided that this question needs a thorough review and should be tabled for future discussion.
5. What’s the long-term plan for Centers and Cores?
a. The vision for the research enterprise is to concentrate funding to deploy it in a very purposeful way. Funding to support cores and centers must align with current and future strategic research directions. We need to be extremely purposeful and to make sure we have a unique set of core services that support the infrastructure needs of the institution’s research priorities.
6. What do you see as the role of the Centers?
a. We continue to see the centers playing a larger role in defining the research direction of the institution. Centers are a great mechanism to bring people together in a focused manner.
InterAC Meetings – A Year in Review and Future Meetings
Jay Kaplan led the group in an open discussion, to review the topics covered in the past year and recommendations for topics for the coming year.
Ideas for the coming year:
1. Continue with the internal speakers. These help to identify synergies across centers and cores, and help connect faculty research ideas.
2. Aging or Alzheimer’s Center presentations, including cores and services available to others.
3. Review of large collaborative grant opportunities to identify partners for the submissions (NIH’s U & P mechanisms – question from Drs. Langefeld and Kaplan).
4. An update on the continuing integration of Biomedical Research Services and Administration (BRSA), development of their website, and support services. The evolution of BRSA should have an overall impact on the academic activities in the institution.
5. Education mission restructure and vision for new longitudinal curriculum, and how this will impact the research enterprise and the center goals.
6. Discussion questions for group brainstorming:
a. As center and cores, how do we help the institution leverage partnerships with the clinical enterprise for research purposes?
b. What would it look like to have a relationship with the academic part of other academic medical centers in research? Could our research infrastructure support other, smaller research entities to leverage expertise over a larger enterprise?
c. How do we facilitate an increase in our research activities by taking advantage of the strengths in the clinical enterprise? The current compensation plan does not reward clinicians taking part in research activities. How can this paradigm be changed?
d. How can we restructure the funds flow for the health system and School of Medicine to highlight the positive contributions of the research enterprise and how it benefits the clinical mission?
REMINDER: Dr. Boris Pasche will be speaking next month on the Comprehensive Cancer Center’s mission and direction. Please send Ms. Molloy any specific questions that you would like Dr. Pasche to cover in advance of the meeting.