Friday Focus: Welcome to the Office of Research Integrity!
January 14, 2021
The Office of the Vice Chancellor for Research at UAF, Alaska’s research university, focuses on our mission to serve and support the research endeavor. This takes many forms. We are striving to reduce the hurdles for researchers so they can realize their goals while producing high-quality research for our university, our state and our nation. This is paramount to our achieving the strategic goals laid out specifically for UAF’s research , namely to go from our current status of Tier 2 to Tier 1, the highest possible rank.
As the research university in Alaska, we take pride in not just the quantity of the research done here, but also the quality. The Office of Research Integrity staff are an important component of the VCR’s support as they promote integrity in research and teaching while ensuring a safe and productive work environment. This is vitally important as we push our researchers to achieve even more success, especially in these tough economic times. Now, more than ever, the UAF research community needs to feel supported in their work.
Integrity in research covers many topics, including but not limited to ethical conduct in both human subject research and use of animals; proper authorship, publications and peer review; managing conflicts of interest and data management; encouraging collaboration and mentoring; and eliminating research misconduct. ORI facilitates the responsible conduct of research through educational, preventive and service activities.
UAF has three research compliance committees who review and monitor research and teaching activities in specific areas: 1) the Institutional Animal Care and Use Committee, responsible for oversight of all university activities involving live vertebrates; 2) the Institutional Review Board, which oversees all research projects in which living people are the subject of the research; and 3) the Institutional Biosafety Committee, which reviews and approves the use of recombinant DNA, genetically modified organisms, and infectious agents. These committees are composed of faculty as part of their service workload, with the ORI research integrity administrator supporting their efforts.
The United States government regulates the transfer of certain goods, technology and technical data considered to be strategically important to the U.S. in the interest of national security, economic or foreign policy concerns. Of even greater importance to the university is that the government also restricts the release of certain information to foreign nationals here in the U.S. The complicated network of federal agencies and interrelated regulations that govern exports is collectively referred to as “export controls.” ORI’s export controls officer must familiarize themselves with these regulations, keep up with changes, and advise researchers and research administration on compliance in the many activities that are affected by export controls.
It is my pleasure to introduce Cassie Pinkel and Aaron Menshouse. I’m especially pleased to make this introduction because, for the first time since I took on the interim VCR position, ORI is fully staffed. While Cassie and Aaron are both new to the ORI team, Cassie has been with UAF for four years as the VCR office administrative assistant. Cassie stepped up to acting research integrity administrator when that position became vacant, engaging in a rapid and intense learning curve! Now officially in ORI, Cassie brings her energetic love of learning to this new, complicated task. Cassie will be working directly with the compliance committees and researchers. We are happy to have her in this new role!
Aaron is new to UAF, but has been here in Fairbanks since 2016. Newly retired after 20 years of service in the Army, we are lucky he and his family decided to stay in Fairbanks! Even luckier that Aaron is now UAF’s export control officer. His experience as a senior intelligence technician, as well as other assignments he had in the Army, required him to develop and demonstrate many of the skills we needed to round out our team. Aaron will be working to ensure the export controls are understood and followed by researchers at UAF.
A fully staffed ORI is vital to a healthy and thriving research university. So, to Aaron and Cassie, I say welcome to the Office of Research Integrity, and thank you for choosing UAF!
Friday Focus is a column written by a different member of UAF’s leadership team every
week. On occasion, a guest writer is invited to contribute a column.