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. We 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. Only domestic students (citizens or permanent residents) are eligible (TGE) for appointment to T32s.

Current parent T32 funding announcement - PA-25-168

Current general NIGMS T32 funding announcement - PAR-23-228 

NIH Training Grants

NIH Guide for Grants and Contracts

National Science Foundation Research Traineeship (NRT) Program 

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.

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 FY25.

*Tuition and Graduate Student Services Fee are charged all four quarters: Summer, Autumn, Winter, and Spring.  

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

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 Michele O'Neill 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. You need the info it contains to plan and manage your award. It contains information on how many trainees you can appoint, when you can appoint, and what steps you can take without prior approval. Terms vary so read carefully.

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.

Peer reviewed publications that result from work initiated while a trainee is supported by the grant must be publicly accessible. Publications are reported annually in the Research Performance Progress Report (RPPR). You can search for publications directly in PubMed or as a delegate in the Program Director's myNCBI.

Trainee publications associated with the grant support will be imported directly from the Program Director's myNCBI account into Section C of the RPPR. 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 how to bring applicable publications into compliance. A PMCID indicates that a publication has met the compliance requirements.

myNCBI help library including how to make a delegate

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

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. Trainees will also need NIH Commons IDs with the trainee role. BSD PhD students usually receive Commons IDs when they matriculate. Reach out to Michele O'Neill for predoctoral trainee Commons IDs. URA usually manages postdoctoral IDs but we are happy to answer questions or assist as necessary.

xTRAIN - BSD requirements and 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.

Postdoc trainees on T32s incur a payback obligation to NIH during the initial 12 months of their appointment. The payback agreement must be completed before the start of the NIH appointment and funding support. NIH provides a list of Payback FAQs in their Research Training and Career Development FAQs. Postdoctoral fellowship appointments also require university appointment and approval. Please contact the relevant BSD HR department and the Assistant Director for Postdoctoral Affairs for further information.