Training Grant Overview

You may need access to NIH Commons and your institutional partners will include the Office of Graduate and Postdoctoral Affairs (OGPA) and University Research Administration. At the National Institutes of Health, your application or award Institute is also central to your application or award management. Tracie DeMack and Michele O'Neill are here to answer questions, provide training, offer application support and post-award guidance, as well as help in directing further inquiries. Vicky Prince serves as the Director of Training Grants for the BSD and advises faculty and programs on applications and faculty mentoring. There is a quarterly meeting for Training Grant Directors as well as a listserv. Training Grant Administrators should join the listserv and attend quarterly or semi-annual meetings. 

There are three main deadlines for NIH T32 awards: January 25, May 25, and September 25. Some institutes only accept applications for certain deadlines. If you are submitting a new application, your program director should contact the appropriate institute well in advance of submitting. You should start at least six months in advance (depending on the complexity of the program, more time may be required). For NIH training grants, there are at least two, but up to three sets of guidelines to follow. The first is the program announcement which explains the parameters of the funding program, the second is the Application Guide which provides guidance for completing the required forms, and the third is institute-specific guidance. Not all institutes provide additional guidelines, but it is important to check. Many institutes also require a letter requesting permission to apply for costs (including full tuition) 6 weeks before the application deadline. Check your Funding Announcement and the institute specific instructions carefully.

Current parent T32 funding announcement - PA-23-048

Current general NIGMS T32 funding announcement - PAR-20-213

NIH Training Grants

NIH Guide for Grants and Contracts

National Science Foundation Research Traineeship (NRT) Program 

Department of Education (DoEd) - Graduate Assistance in Areas of National Need

NIH Stipend levels are announced annually, though increases may be announced after the start of the federal fiscal year. There is no guarantee of an annual increase. The stipend level corresponds to the federal budget year it is issued in. (Previous Year  Stipend Level)

For training grants, the BSD supplements predoctoral tuition, fees and stipends. However, the budgets in training grant applications must reflect true costs. The following table shows cost types, full cost, and funding source for FY23.

*Tuition and the health center fee is charged all four quarters: Summer, Autumn, Winter, and Spring.  

^Insurance and Student Life fee is charged Autumn, Winter, and Spring quarters for 12 month coverage.

All Applications

Routing 
Applications must be routed to URA via AURA preferably two weeks but at least one week in advance of the deadline. AURA is an electronic research administrative system that facilitates pre-award research administration activities on campus. If you are not familiar with AURA, you will need to complete the access request form.

OGPA recommends an informal review of training grant applications prior to submitting to NIH. The program director (and advisors as appropriate) identify an internal and external reviewer who are familiar with NIH training grant standards. Out of courtesy, and to make the reviewers' comments meaningful, a draft of the application ought to be available 4-6 weeks before submission. Please contact Tracie DeMack for more details.

Conflict of Interest Disclosure and CITI COI Training
By the time of application submission, Program Directors must have a current annual Conflict of Interest (COI) disclosure on file and for NIH, must have completed CITI COI training within the last four years.

Institutional Boilerplate Resources

NIH Application Guides, including training specific instructions

Training grants are federal awards that are subject not only to the policies and guidelines of the University of Chicago, but also to the policies and guidelines of the agency (NIH, NSF, DoEd) and the federal government. The Notice of Grant Award is the best place to start to understand the rules governing your grant; please read it carefully. 

In most cases URA will set up the account once requested by the administrator on a Form 70 (see the forms page in Adminet for a complete list of University of Chicago forms).  In some cases the unit may set up the account: see the Accounts Create page on the Financial Services website for a list of units with special permission to set up accounts. 

Note:  An “associate account” will be created for every NRSA award to be used only for the childcare costs associated with each budget year of the project period.  

Once the account number has been assigned, the account number may be used by OGPA to pay predoc tuition, stipend and fees or may be used by your HR contact to pay postdoctoral fellow stipends.  Other costs can be charged to the grant (within the scope of the award) by entering the account number in epayments, GEMS, Buysite or other University-approved mechanisms. 

Triennial report and Closeout

The Training Grant Account Projection (TGAP) worksheet is to be prepared and submitted to OGPA for review by November 15, April 15, May 31 and at the close of the budget year to create the annual Closing Memo.  OGPA must review and approve the Closing Memo prior to submission to URA. Contact OGPA for the most current version of the TGAP.

The annual FFR is sent by URA based on the internal closing memo (above, within the TGAP).

Training Related Expenses guidance can be found in the NIH Grants Policy Statement.

T32s must comply with the NIH Public Access Policy. To advance science and improve human health, NIH makes the peer-reviewed articles it funds publicly available on PubMed Central. The NIH public access policy requires scientists to submit final peer-reviewed journal manuscripts that arise from NIH funds to PubMed Central immediately upon acceptance for publication. [more]

Peer reviewed publications that result from work that was initiated while a trainee was supported must be publicly accessible. Publications are reported annually in the Research Performance Progress Report (RPPR), which feeds publications associated the training grant directly from the Program Director's myNCBI account. The starting point for determining what and how to report is the NIH Public Access website that leads you through a decision tree to determine what you will have to do to support your trainees and PIs in getting their publications in compliance.

NIH is the electronic office and interface of the NIH. As a training grant administrator, your responsibilities in Commons may include the following:

• Appointing and terminating training grant appointees in the xTRAIN module
• Helping prepare a non-competing application in the RPPR module
• Tracking trainee outcomes for reporting in the xTRACT module

If necessary, reach out to Michele O'Neill or URA to get or update your Commons ID. Training Grant Administrators generally have the AO and ASST roles.

xTRAIN - BSD best practices for appointing and terminating trainees

xTRACT - Completing Table 8 for NIH Research Progress Performance Report - RPPR (required) and completing full table sets for new and competing applications (currently optional, will become mandatory).

Please contact Michele O'Neill with training grant NIH Commons questions and for support with NIH training tables, as well as for an introduction to NIH xTRACT.