Agricultural Experiment Station Capacity Grants

As part of the salary funding you receive to be a KAES (Kansas Agricultural Experiment Station) scientist, you are required to participate in a capacity project. USDA-NIFA uses these projects to review the work being accomplished by the effort (salary) they are paying for and receive reports of the projects results for their records. Although there is not sufficient funding to support all your project operating costs, your salary is still funded by AES dollars and a project is required.

• Only tenured and tenure-track faculty are required to participate. Non-tenure track are not required to participate, but can if they wish. All participants on capacity projects are required to meet the requirements of participating in a federally funded activity (i.e. annual reporting, compliance training, etc.).
• Any publications or presentations based on the work produced from these projects must recognize USDA-NIFA funding, even though the funding only provides for salary. USDA-NIFA provides this language: "This work is/was supported by the USDA National Institute of Food and Agriculture, [insert project type, e.g. Hatch/Evans-Allen/McIntire Stennis] project [insert accession number]"
• Leverage your capacity grant for additional competitive funding
• New AES appointees MUST be on a project sometime during their first year at K-State
• Writing project initiations when needed
• Timely annual reporting of results; the K-State deadline is December 31
• Notifying KAES staff if their participation in a project changes
• Notifying KAES staff if they are planning to leave K-State

There are multiple ways to find a project to participate in.

1. Find a project in which KAES already participates and is currently active.
• Be sure to discuss your participation in an active project with the lead faculty member on that project. Objectives and scope have already been written and approved by USDA-NIFA, adding you to the project may require update to these.
• A listing of all KAES projects can be found here search listing. Use the keyword search box to search project titles.
2. If KAES does not have a currently active project that works for you, review www.nimss.org for a potential Hatch Multistate project. The Associate Dean for Research must approve participation in a Multistate which KAES does not currently participate.
• You do not need to login to search, just type a keyword into the initial search box on the main webpage. This keyword can be a faculty member's last name, a topic (such as beef), or a project number that someone may have suggested to you. Be sure to check the date range of the projects listed to find something current. When you View a project, click the Outline tab to review the project's objectives, then the Participants tab to see the listing of faculty already on the project (in Participants you can sort the listing by Station/Name).
• KAES only supports Multistate Research Projects (you can only spend departmentally distributed funds or salary/FTE on these types of projects). You may be a participant in Multistate Research Coordinating Committees (CC), Development Committees (DC), and Education/Extension and Research (ERA) Committees; however, we are unable to map expenditures to these types of projects, so CC, DC, and ERA projects cannot serve as your KAES project. Research Projects do not have these additional letters and are only identified with their regional letter, for instance NC, S, W, NE. NRSP projects are also eligible to fulfill the KAES project requirement.
3. Create a new Hatch project. If you decide this is your best option, please contact Terri Fayle for next steps.

New Projects for Non-AES Researchers

Non-AES faculty who wish to participate in a Hatch or Hatch multistate project, either new or currently active at KAES, are required to obtain approval from the Associate Dean of Research. Email the ADR identifying the project in which you want to participate in or create requesting approval to do so and include discussion on how your research associates with the project along with identifying other projects in which you already participate. Please cc Terri Fayle on this email.

All expenses to multistate projects must be in line with 2 CFR 200 regulations and be directly related to the project's activities

How to Participate (Questions? Terri Fayle, tfayle@ksu.edu)

• See New Projects above for identifying a project.
• NIMSS (www.nimss.org) is the web location where the regional (multiple states participating) version of the project is managed. In order to officially participate in a multistate, you need to be listed as a participant at the NIMSS site.
• NRS (nrs.nifa.usda.gov) is where you will process the Project Initiation (proposal) for your multi-state participation as well as submit your annual results reporting. NIFA reviews and approves all initiations and reports.
• Requirements:
  • Attendance at the annual meeting for the multistate project will be expected for all participating faculty on the project.
  • Users moving from another university to K-State who need to update their profile should contact Terri Fayle to have their profile updated instead of creating a new profile.
  • Follow the NIMSS instructions to add yourself to a multistate project below.

NIMSS instructions to add yourself to a multistate project (Questions? Terri Fayle, tfayle@ksu.edu)

• Use the New User link in the top right corner of www.nimss.org if you do not have a login.
• Login at www.nimss.org, use Forgot Password if needed
• Choose Participants from the left menu
• Choose Draft/Edit Participant Info
• Choose Draft New
• Complete the Appendix E
  • Choose the appropriate project number from the dropdown
  • Choose your name from the dropdown
  • Only when a project number is chosen will the Objectives show up. Select only the objectives which will relate to your research.
  • If you will be the official representative, click the box (the first K-State participant on the project will be required to be the official representative)
  • Enter your percentage Research time contribution under SY (scientist year) as .1.
  • Enter your Knowledge Area, Subject of Investigation, and Field of Science codes. PLEASE DO NOT LEAVE "0" IN A FIELD. When you add a new row, please enter a KA, SOI and FOS on all rows. These codes can be looked up by clicking the link above each box. These must be completed. Each row is a complete record. You can enter multiple rows.

Allocation of Funds and Availability (Questions? Maggie Quigley, senderm@ksu.edu)

• Allocations will be made to the participating faculty member's departmental account (we will no longer make allocations to the lead investigators for usage by active participants). Each participant will receive their own allocation.
• Annual allocations of $2,500 per participant per project for travel expenses to the annual meeting will be made to coincide with federal fiscal year (October 1-September 30).
• Funds cannot be used for expenses related to CC, DC and ERA projects.
• Funds can only be spent on Active projects. Projects are considered Active after your participation is completed at nimss.org and the initiation is approved by KAES and NIFA within NRS.

Annual Meeting (Questions? Maggie Quigley, senderm@ksu.edu)

• For the NCAC department head groups, AES will fund the travel for the annual meetings. This amount will be in addition to the annual allocation for the projects.
• All K-State participating researchers are expected to attend the annual meeting for research projects (does not include CC, DC, or ERA) in person, if possible, and electronically if other obligations preclude their attendance in person.
• The Dean's business office will deny the travel payment if the travel is not one of the team members named on the project, UNLESS there is descriptive text stating name of employee traveling, who they are traveling in replacement for, and that they are specifically reporting on results obtained for objective X of project number Y.

Allocation Expenditure Period (Questions? Maggie Quigley, senderm@ksu.edu)

• Allocations are available to spend for one year between the 1^st of October and the 30^th of September.
• All funds remaining unspent at the 30th of September will be pulled back by AES. These funds are time restricted by USDA-NIFA. In October, departments will be asked to fill out an Outstanding Obligations report for all expenditures through 9/30.

Submission of Travel Documents (Questions? Maggie Quigley, senderm@ksu.edu)

• For research committee travel (projects without AC, CC, DC or ERA), all documents must specify travel is to the annual meeting and identify the Kansas project number (e.g. KS00-0018-HA).
• Regarding NCAC meeting travel, AES is hopeful Department Head's can and will participate in these committees and attend the annual meetings. Therefore, the Head’s actual travel costs will be paid by AES. In situations where sending a substitute is required, this is approved by AES, with the understanding the substitute will provide a state report to the Head and assist with project reviews if needed. Departments would use their multi-state account to initially pay the traveler. Once all the travel expenses have been processed, send an email to Ag Business Office which includes total of the trip, traveler, purpose (i.e. NCAC01 annual meeting), travel dates, location, and if a substitute traveled include justification why the Head could not attend. Funds will be transferred back to your multi-state account. If the NCAC annual meeting is held directly before/after an association meeting, the airfare maybe be charged entirely to multistate, but the lodging and per diem charged to multistate should only include those days associated with the NCAC annual meeting.

Logging in to NIFA's NRS

The USDA eAuthentication Service has partnered with Login.gov to provide secure online access to USDA programs and services. All new users of the NIFA Reporting System (NRS) will need to complete registration by creating a Login.gov account and completing identify verification. New users will then need to request a role from their Organizational Administrator(s) at their institution (contact Terri Fayle).

• Create an account at https://login.gov
  • Your User Type is Customer
  • You will be asked for an authentication method and Text is typically used. It is not required that you have a second authentication method.
  • When complete, let Terri Fayle know which K-State email you used, and a role will be created with the same email in nrs.nifa.usda.gov.

Steps to create an NRS account

• Navigate to nrs.nifa.usda.gov.
• Click Create Account.
• Choose Customer as your user type, then click Continue.
• You will receive a registration email, open the email and click Continue Registration.
• Enter your complete name as it appears on a government issued ID. Choose a password, then Submit.
• Click Login in to your application, login with the information you just used to create the account.
• Choose "Verify My Identity", choose the online option and complete the account profile.
• Answer the questions (this is the hard part). You are allowed to go through the questions more than once.
• After successful verification, click Continue.
• If you cannot online verify you will have to verify in person at a USDA office. The contact person in Manhattan is Kevin Religa, 785-776-7582.
• If you would like the NIFA documentation for completing the registration or have any issues, contact Terri Fayle, tfayle@ksu.edu.

Drafting the Project Initiation

• Project Initiation Worksheet - helps you get the right information written in order to copy/paste into NRS.
• Initiations act as your 'proposal' that gets submitted to NIFA.
• If you will have other Kansas AES faculty joining you on this project, please include them in drafting the Project Initiation. Its important everyone's research be represented in the Initiation so their results can be reported.
• Your initiation is reviewed by AES before being submitted to NIFA, then by NIFA National Program Leaders to determine its relevance to USDA.

Annual Results Reporting

• Results Reporting Worksheet - helps you get the right information written in order to copy/paste into NRS.
• Accessing the results reporting area
  • Click on Manage on the Projects & Programs tile.
  • Find your project by typing your name in the Project Director search field. Once you see the project, click on the Title of the project to open the record.
  • Review the record you’ve opened to confirm it’s the right one. You’ll see project title, start end dates, and all the sections of the Project Initiation.
  • Once you’ve confirmed you’re on the correct record, in the top quarter of the page there is a box with drop down arrow that says “Results” – this is the reporting area.
  • Click the dropdown arrow for Results, then click Add Result.

Project Change

• Changes to projects can be made at any time. Please contact Terri Fayle and she can process the change for you.
• Its imperative to keep the Co-Project Directors updated as well as the lead Project Director.

Capacity Projects in Cayuse

All capacity projects are recorded in Cayuse. You can look up your project at any time to see your proposal and the co-investigators currently identified with your project. Cayuse is how AES obtains local approval for your project before it is submitted to NIFA.

Capacity Grant Training PDF 11-29-2018 (pdf)