The RAMP Grants team has continued to share important information about the system in faculty meetings while also addressing questions and concerns.  Development of training materials is currently underway as the team prepares to offer various training methods and guides to prepare and assist the research community in using our new proposal and award system. RAMP Grants remains on course to go-live on July 1, 2020.

As we prepare to launch RAMP Grants, we have been offering opportunities for a sneak peek of the software this month prior to our training workshops which will begin in May.  We have brief testing sessions planned to guide you through using the Grants module.  Your participation is essential as it will help us identify any critical issues with the system and allow us to gain feedback as we work toward crafting effective training materials for the research community.  We strongly encourage all researchers, department administrators, chairs and deans to be involved in testing.  Most sessions are only an hour and a guided test script is provided with an opportunity for questions and answers.  Specific instructions will be provided to help users navigate the software. 

As many of us are learning to adapt to changing conditions resulting from Covid-19, we recognize that revisions are necessary for our remaining RAMP Grants testing sessions.  We will transition to online testing via Zoom beginning Monday, March 23 for the remaining federal and non-federal sessions, as well as the department review sessions.  The dates and times for our scheduled sessions have been adjusted and we recommend that you visit the RAMP project website for testing details (including Zoom meeting information).  This website will continue to serve as a valuable resource for RAMP Grants information in the coming weeks and months.  Your participation in testing continues to be critical to the success of the Grants module.   We really appreciate the participation and feedback from individuals in recent testing sessions.  We had 196 logged comments from testing!  These comments are being reviewed by our team as we work toward tailoring our training curriculum.  System training development remains on track for May delivery.   Further details on training will be communicated next month.

The training sessions are divided into functional areas.  Following are some points to keep in mind as you decide which session would work best for you.

• The “Non-federal” sessions are intended for testing proposals that won’t be submitted through grants.gov.
• The “Federal” sessions include the “Non-federal” session along with the SF424 (grants.gov) submission process.
• The “Department Review” sessions require attendance at either the “Non-federal” or “Federal” session and is highly recommend for users that will review and approve proposals for their department.

We look forward to engaging with you during this important phase of the project.  Please share this information with your colleagues and let us know if you have any questions or concerns.

Angie Rowe, RAMP Project Manager, Office of Research
arrowe@fsu.edu
(850) 644-8659

Pam Ray, Senior Director, Sponsored Research Administration
pray2@fsu.edu
(850) 644-8643