At-Risk Proposals

Instructions for Requesting At-Risk Approval

All requests for “At-Risk” proposal submission approval (within 8 business hours of deadline) must be initiated and/or endorsed by the unit chair or director and sent to Kang Xia, AgBioResearch Associate Director, at xiakang@msu.edu and copied to abr.ors@msu.edu. 

Please include the following information in your request: 

  • Principal Investigator’s name.
  • Proposal due date.
  • Proposal Development (PD) number.
  • Explanation detailing the extenuating circumstances for the exception.
  • Other optional information: provide any other helpful status information for the research dean to use in their decision making (e.g., is the technical portion complete, has the detailed budget received approval from OSP, is the abstract complete, are the agency forms complete, etc.)

MSU’s At-Risk Proposal Policy

A late proposal is considered at-risk when it is provided to OSP within eight (8) business hours of the submission deadline. The at-risk proposal must be specifically endorsed by the applicable research dean before it is reviewed by OSP.

After receiving the endorsement from the research dean, OSP will make reasonable efforts to submit the endorsed proposal. OSP cannot ensure the same service levels for at-risk proposals, which may jeopardize receipt by the sponsor.

At-Risk approval from the Research Dean is required if any of the following criteria have been met:

  1. System-to-System (S2S) Submissions:
    • Proposal attachments have a status of incomplete within eight business hours of the deadline.
    • Proposal attachments have a timestamp that is within eight business hours of the deadline.
    • Significant changes are made to proposal attachments within eight business hours of the deadline.
    • Proposal Development (PD) document was put into route within eight business hours of the deadline.

  2. All Other Proposal Submissions:
    • Proposal was released to OSP for submission within eight (8) business hours of the deadline, or forms that require authorized signature were sent to OSP within eight (8) business hours of the deadline (e.g., MSU Commitment Form, Letter of Intent, etc.).
    • Significant proposal changes are made within eight (8) business hours of the deadline (only for proposals being submitted by OSP).
    • Proposal Development (PD) document was put into route within eight (8) business hours of the deadline.