Dear All:
Recently the Assistant Vice Chancellor of my University proposed a vision
for the management and development of core research facilities, my
NMRfacility is one of them. He and those high level managers would
like to
hear from all core facility response before they make their decision. I
guess they would like to centralize all facility to have some cost saving,
I have no experience on the process from decentrized facility to
centralized one, So I would like to hear your experience if you have been
in this situation either way.
In the proposal, There are six points were listed as pro of centralization.
And I listed my concerns below.
1. Billing, scheduling, auditing, and management functions are handled
centrally.
Well, I am not sure it is good idea, since the billing for NMR is so
different. but if university would like to pay and design a special
software for utilize NMR billing, it does not sounds bad. Any experience
can share?
2. Consolidated similar core facilities into single entities.
Well, currently there two NMR facilities in my university: one is my
facility, mainly support chemistry (organic and inorganic research); the
other is biochemistry for protein, which do not have NMR manager now, a
research faculty is in charge of maintenance of instrumentation. Anyone
have experience to merge two different functional NMR lab together?
3.Inter-institutional agreements have been established
I only have one question, if you have inter-institutional agreement, and
the rate for same instrument are different how do you manage the rate?
also, if your facility is run with subsidy from department, how do you
manage the subsidy for other institutes?
4. Visually appealing Web sites that organize their core research facilities
I like this idea a lot.
5.Career tracks for core facility Directors provide awards annually for
most outstanding cores.
Currently, there is no clear track for facility manager and all facility
manager in my university is on SPE-at will, which means I can be let-go
next day. I like the idea to have a career track for my position, would you
mind share your experience if your position do have a great design of
career path.
6. Advised by research-intensive faculty that depend on efficient
operations and cutting-edge instruments/services.
Currently the NMR facility does not have a advised faculty but we do have
users committee. Since my facility is severing research faculties with
different research needs, I work with each of them on their projects. I am
not sure whether it is good idea to have one individual on the advise board.
Sorry about such long email and thank you so much for any of your response.
Best regards,
Jennifer
Received on Fri Apr 04 2014 - 04:46:01 MST