Researcher Resources

Purchasing Cards

A Purchasing card (i.e., a P-card) can be used to purchase supplies or equipment that cost less than $2,500 without a purchase order. Visit the Division of Agriculture’s P-Card Resources page to learn more.

P-Cards can be requested in Workday with the “Create Request” task. P-Card training is offered regularly by the Division of Agriculture’s Business Office. Visit the P-Card Training page to learn more and register for a session. Additional trainings may be requested by emailing pcard@uada.edu.

Remember:

• Receipts are required for all P-Card purchases, including in-store and online purchases.
• The original receipt or a photo/scan of the receipt must be submitted as soon as possible to the departmental office with a form justifying the expense and indicating which funding source (in the form of a Worktag) will cover the expense. Contact your department’s accounting staff for more information.

Procurement

To learn more about the Division of Agriculture’s procurement policies and processes, visit the procurement website.

Remember:

• Purchases of over $2,500 require a purchase order to be created by the departmental office. Be sure to allow plenty of time for purchase orders to move through the approval process.
• Items over $20,000 require competitive quote bids, or a sole source process (if only one possible supplier exists). See the Purchasing Types & Thresholds heading on the procurement website.
• The state of Arkansas has contracts with specific suppliers for certain items such as office supplies or paper towels. Division of Agriculture employees cannot purchase these items from other suppliers.
  • Office Supplies Guidelines
  • List of State Contracts
• All Amazon purchases must be made using an Amazon Business Account. Learn how to receive access on the Amazon Business page.
• For computer equipment and accessories, visit the Technology Setup section of this guide.

Division of Agriculture Vehicle Fuel Cards and Maintenance

WEX fuel cards should be used for all fuel and maintenance purchases for Division of Agriculture vehicles. These WEX cards are associated with the vehicles, not the cardholder. All drivers allowed to use Division of Agriculture vehicles will need to set up a WEX prompt PIN number by contacting vehicles@uada.edu.

If the WEX card is not accepted by a vendor performing routine maintenance on the Division of Agriculture vehicle, a P-card may be used instead.

For more information about the use, maintenance and reporting requirements for Division of Agriculture AES vehicles, visit the business office’s Division of Agriculture AES Vehicles page.

Division of Agriculture policies governing the use of Division of Agriculture vehicles can be found on the policies page, under the Travel section.

Non-Vehicle Fuel Purchases

When purchasing fuel for non-vehicles like ATVs, tractors, etc., special WEX cards for equipment can be requested by contacting vehicles@uada.edu.

Lab Supplies

On Campus

• An Avantor/VWR store located in Chemistry Building Room 37 stocks liquid nitrogen, dry ice, and other common items. Help with in-store or online purchases is available from Rachel Cherry (cherry@avantorsciences.com). Learn more on the campus scientific supplies page.
  • Note that only small quantities of dry ice are available from the Avantor/VWR stockroom. Larger quantities can be purchased from the Harps Store at Fiesta Square (3055 N College Ave, Fayetteville, AR).
• A Thermo Fisher Scientific Supply Center is located at the west end of the 2^nd floor hallway in the Rosen Center. Located on campus at 979 W Maple Street, this self-service Supply Center contains a Fridge (4 °C) and Freezer (-20 °C) that stocks a small number of commonly-used molecular biology reagents and laboratory chemicals which you can purchase online through the Thermo Fisher Scientific website. You will be notified by the Rosen Center Director, Brandon Wodka (wodka@uark.edu, 214-543-9115), regarding any items that are delivered. In addition, if you order reagents from Thermo Fisher that require storage at -20 °C, you may be able to request delivery to the Supply Center freezer to reduce shipping fees.

Considerations for Stocking New Labs

For stocking a new lab, some major scientific suppliers have negotiated discounts for the University of Arkansas:

• Avantor/VWR – Rachel Cherry
• Grainger – Christopher Jordan
• Fisher Scientific – Angelia Caro Monroig

Note that many suppliers offer significant discounts for new laboratory setup; be sure to discuss this with each supplier’s sales representative.

Faculty wishing to create a job opening to recruit and hire research staff should contact their departmental office administrator and develop a hiring plan. Depending on the position you are seeking, position description outlines should be available from your departmental office. The hiring plan should specify where the position will be advertised, salary range, as well as the requirements of the position.

Recruiting Graduate Students

First, discuss with your Department Head what level of graduate status you will be granted (to advise M.S. or both M.S. and Ph.D. students), and how to obtain this status. Learn more by visiting the University of Arkansas Graduate School.

Prospective graduate students should be directed to apply for admission to the Graduate School. Applications will then be forwarded to the department or program for review.

Graduate applications can be reviewed in the online system Slate. While this system was designed to be accessed by admissions coordinators and other administrators, in some cases you may wish to request access to view applications from students who have not selected an advisor. Slate training is available from the Graduate School and International Education.

Work with your departmental Graduate Admissions Committees to ensure that they are on the lookout for prospective graduate students’ applications to join your lab.

It is recommended that faculty are to support students fully or at least partially on grant funds. Departments may also help support graduate students through research and teaching assistantships. Contact your Department Head with any questions.

The Graduate School also awards several fellowships to incoming students, including the Distinguished Doctoral and Doctoral Academy Fellowships. Students must be nominated by the department for these awards. If you feel that your incoming student should be nominated, contact your Department Head. These fellowships are based on students’ GRE scores. So, even though the admissions office does not require the GRE, it may be beneficial for students to take the test.

The Office of Faculty Affairs offers a 6-week workshop on mentoring graduate students.

Hiring Student Workers

To hire undergraduate helpers, the departmental office administrator must create an open position in Workday, but the recruitment and interview process can happen informally, through flyers, emails, etc. Sending announcements to faculty who teach relevant classes can be effective, along with flyers in high-traffic areas on campus.

There is a specific site for posting work-study positions, which the office administrator can access. Work-study is available for Fall and Spring semesters but not Summer.

For information on how to make sure your hiring process follows Division policy on Equal Opportunity, Compliance and Title IX (OEOC), refer to the resources available at the Office of Inclusion, Access, and Compliance website.

Hiring Postdoctoral Associates, Technicians, and Other Professionals

Position announcements for these professional positions are created in Workday. Visit the Division of Agriculture’s Human Resources Hiring Resources page for more information.

Once a position has been approved in Workday, postings automatically appear on the university job website, but the faculty member is responsible for posting the job on other locations such as professional organizations’ job banks.

Interested candidates must submit applications online through Workday, and the faculty must review applicants within Workday. The choice of who to interview, and subsequently who to hire, must be submitted through Workday and approved before the supervisor can move forward with the hire.

General Human Resources questions can be directed to Jamie Bentley (bentley@uark.edu).

Resources for Mentoring Postdoctoral Associates

The Office of Faculty Affairs offers a 6-week workshop on mentoring graduate students and postdoctoral associates.

Additionally, the National Postdoctoral Association provides publications, toolkits, and webinar archives that are helpful not only for postdoctoral associates, but for their mentors and host institutions. For example, the site includes toolkits to assist in establishing institutional programs such as postdoctoral offices, associations, and symposia. Accessing these materials requires membership dues.

myIDP is a free tool developed by the American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS) to help postdoctoral associates develop an individual development plan (IDP). This includes:

• Separate self-assessment tests for skills, interests, and values
• Exercises to help identify goals in each of these areas
• Planning tools to select a mentoring team and generate a written IDP

This is invaluable for mentors who want their postdoctoral associates to participate in the process of developing a mentoring plan.

The Compact Between Postdoctoral Appointees and Their Mentors was developed by the Association of American Medical Colleges, but is broadly applicable to postdoctoral associates in STEM fields. According to the AAMC website, it is:

• A discussion-starter among postdoctoral program directors, administrators, faculty, appointees, and other stakeholders.
• The foundation for a contract to be signed by postdoctoral appointees and their mentors.
• A recruitment tool to signify programmatic commitment to postdoctoral appointees.
• An element of the orientation for new faculty/postdoctoral appointees.
• A component of the appointee-mentor annual evaluation process.”

 

Additionally, here are some useful publications recommended by Fiona Goggin, the Chair of the Mentoring Committee for the Entomology and Plant Pathology Department.

• Branan, J., Li, X. & Wheeler, R. (2018) Building a career planning course for STEM PhDs. Nat Biotechnol 36, 1217–1219. https://doi.org/10.1038/nbt.4312 (Describes a professional development course for postdocs developed at the Scripps Institute.)
• Curtis, L., Micoli, K. & Pohlhaus, J. Postdoc competencies. Nature 453, 1282 (2008). https://doi.org/10.1038/nj7199-1282b  (Authored by leaders of the National Postdoctoral Association. The goals of the article are to define the core skills that postdoctoral associates should be developing through their postdoctoral training.)

National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine. 2014. The Postdoctoral Experience Revisited. Washington, DC: The National Academies Press. https://doi.org/10.17226/18982. Watch the associated YouTube video: Science Unscrambled: The Postdoctoral Experience Revisited.

For researchers in the Division of Agriculture, the appropriate contacts for research safety, chemical inventories, and hazardous waste disposal depend upon their research location. For all research sites on the University of Arkansas Fayetteville campus, researchers should contact the university Environmental Health and Safety Office. For all other research sites, including the Milo J. Shult Agricultural Research and Extension Center and other research stations and centers statewide, researchers should contact the Division of Agriculture’s Office of Environmental Health and Safety.

On campus

Laboratory safety on the University of Arkansas Fayetteville campus uses SciShield as a compliance tool and for training. For help with SciShield or to set up a new lab, PIs will need to contact Karmen Boddie, kbrehmer@uark.edu, 479-575-3537. Each PI must ensure that all chemicals, equipment, hazard statements, and lab members are entered and up to date. When adding members, the PI will mark job assignments for each. This job assignment will then trigger training required to be taken in SciShield. Chemical hazardous waste and biological hazardous waste pickups are coordinated through the ENHS Office by filling out the Hazardous Waste Pick Up Request Form and emailing it to enhs@uark.edu.

Off campus

For other off-campus research sites, whether they are laboratories or field sites, the Division of Agriculture also uses SciShield as a compliance tool. For help within SciShield and to set up a new lab please contact Christine Bryant, Environmental Lab/Health Safety Director, cb130@uark.edu, cbryant@uada.edu, 470-575-4607. When using SciShield all members of the lab, including the PI, will need to use their UARK email and not their UADA email. Chemical and biological hazardous waste pickups are coordinated through the Division of Agriculture’s Environmental Health and Safety Office by filling out the Hazardous Waste Pick Up Request Form and emailing it to cb130@uark.edu.

Research Protocol Approvals

Research that involves recombinant DNA, dangerous toxins or pathogens, human subjects, animal testing, or the possible release of technology or sensitive data to foreign nationals may require institutional review and approval before initiation.

To determine if your research requires review and institutional approval, please consult the Research Integrity and Compliance office (RSIC).

Depending on the nature of your research, you may need to request approval from one or more of the below units:

• The Division of Agriculture Institutional Animal Care and Use Committee (Ag-IACUC) – Ag-IACUC oversees the responsible use of agricultural animals for research and teaching purposes.
• The Institutional Biosafety Committee (IBC) – Researchers must obtain approval from the Institutional Biosafety Committee for research involving recombinant and/or synthetic nucleic acid materials; Risk Group 2 or 3 microorganisms as defined in the NIH Guidelines; biological toxins; bloodborne pathogens; human and nonhuman primate materials; mammalian tumor cell lines; transgenic plants; and transgenic animals. The IBC meets on the 2^nd Thursday of every month to review protocols.
• The Institutional Animal Care and Use Committee (IACUC) – IACUC oversees the responsible use of animals in research and teaching and manages the centralized animal care facilities on campus.
• The Institutional Review Board (IRB) – IRB oversees research involving human subjects.
• Export Control – Prior to collaborating with or sharing equipment, technical data, information, etc. with foreign persons in the United States or abroad, personnel must determine whether government authorization is needed for those activities. Learn more about export control at UA-Fayetteville Export Control page. Please consult with your Department Head and your departmental administrative manager before to engaging with any activities (e.g., hosting a visitor for tours, hosting a research scholar to participate in research in your lab, or accepting an intern). Faculty members are not permitted to issue any invitation letters committing the University of Arkansas or UADA to hosting a foreign individual. These letters need to be originated by the Department Head.

Asset Tracking

Assets and equipment purchased with Division of Agriculture funds are subject to rules and obligations for the employees responsible for the assets. Items that fall into two categories — capital assets that cost more than or equal to $5000 and low-value high-risk trackable assets that cost between $2500-$4999.99 — must be registered and tagged by the Division of Agriculture property accounting department. Asset registrations should be triggered automatically in Workday from supplier invoices; however, some assets might be missed as a result of unsubmitted invoices or incorrect spend categories. Be sure to work with your departmental contact for inventory and asset tracking issues to ensure your equipment is properly tracked.

Items purchased using funds from the University of Arkansas Fayetteville campus will be tagged and tracked through a separate but similar process.

Annual Inventory

To ensure proper tracking of tagged assets, the property accounting department, in coordination with departmental inventory representatives, conducts a physical inventory each year. Through this process, each employee and department demonstrate accountability and helps the Division of Agriculture maintain an accurate inventory of capital equipment, low-value high-risk assets, and real property.

If you store tagged assets in peripheral locations, you may be required to transport them to a central office for the inventory process.

If you permanently transfer inventoried items from your laboratory to another, you will need to formally transfer the item to the other PI’s inventory. If you loan the equipment temporarily, you will need written documentation of the loan, and will be responsible for locating it during your department’s inventory process.

Equipment Surplus

If you wish to discard an item, including computers, ask the departmental office to surplus the item for you. The item will be removed from inventory and hauled away. If you dispose of an item without properly disposing of it, you will be held accountable for it.

Alternatively, you may request asset disposal from the property accounting department by submitting the UADA Asset Surplus List form to property@uada.edu. Specific written permission MUST be obtained from Property Accounting prior to any discarding, cannibalizing, or trading-in of equipment. Additionally, ALL Division of Agriculture assets (tagged or untagged) must go through the surplus process.

Visit the Division of Agriculture’s property accounting department website for more information and FAQs.

To identify the safety and compliance steps specific to your research program, it is advisable to start by reaching out to the Laboratory Safety Compliance Coordinator or the Environmental Health and Safety main office (see below for contact info). In general, important steps include:

Safety Trainings

Required safety trainings are administered by Environmental Health and Safety (EH&S) through an online system called SciShield. Each principal investigator creates a SciShield profile for their lab that lists their lab personnel (including undergraduate and graduate students as well as staff) and defines the hazards each person may encounter (e.g., chemical, radiological, or biological hazards, and physical hazards such as sharps and fire). The system then contacts each person (including the PI) to complete the necessary online safety trainings. PIs must update their lab’s SciShield profile each time lab members join or leave, and if the lab hazards change. For assistance with SciShield, contact the EH&S office.

The university’s policies on chemical, radiological, and biological safety are available at the EH&S website’s Manuals, Guides, Policies and Checklists page.

Contact the Environmental Health and Safety main office with any questions: enhs@uark.edu; (479) 575-5448.

Chemical Inventory and Waste Disposal

Each principal investigator must maintain an up-to-date chemical inventory for their laboratory in the UA ChemTracker system, including both newly purchased chemicals and chemicals transferred from previous investigators. They are also responsible for ensuring that Safety Data Sheets are accessible for all chemicals, and that the use and disposal of chemicals in their laboratory follows university policies.

The EH&S Chemical Safety Page contains many useful resources including the university’s Chemical Hygiene Plan, a template for the ChemTracker inventory, chemical storage and compatibility guidelines, spill response procedures, and safety signs to post in labs.

Policies on hazardous waste disposal are outlined at the EH&S waste disposal page. A form to request waste pickup is accessible at the EH&S website (see the red button labeled “Hazardous Waste Pickup” at the bottom of the page).

Renovation, Repairs, Maintenance or Custom Work

On Campus

When seeking to complete renovations, make repairs, perform maintenance or undertake other custom work at campus facilities, coordinate with your departmental administrative manager and Department Head, who will help you work through Facilities Management (FAMA).

Emergency or after-business-hours repairs should be reported directly to FAMA or to the UA Police Department (479-575-2222) who will coordinate with FAMA.

Off Campus

For large project requests at research stations and research and extension centers, please contact the location director. A list of current research location directors is available on the Arkansas Agricultural Experiment Station Research Locations page.

Special Cases

For HVAC repairs to freezers, growth chambers, etc., it is possible to use FAMA or to contract with an external supplier such as Multi-Craft Contractors, Inc. (479-751-4330).

Calibration and repair of items such as microbalances and pipettors can be outsourced to private companies such as Calibration Services, LLC (870-698-5999). For on-site calibration, it is usually most cost-effective to coordinate with other investigators who may also need calibration services at the same time.

Below is a partial list of core facilities and services within the Division of Agriculture and University of Arkansas campus, with links to ASU and UAMS core facilities as well.

• Arkansas Bioimaging Facility for Agricultural Research (confocal and fluorescence microscopy)
• Rosen Center for Alternative Pest Control (for Greenhouse and Growth Chamber Facilities)
• Arkansas Plant Health Clinic (for plant disease testing)
• Arkansas Nematode Diagnostic Facility
• Arkansas Soil Testing Laboratory
• Arkansas High Performance Computing Center
• Arkansas Integrative Metabolic Research Center (AIMRC) (supports microscopy, spectroscopy, and data science)
• Arkansas Nano-Bio Materials Characterization Facility (including microscopy facilities)
• Arkansas Water Resources Center – Water Quality Lab
• Central Laboratory Animal Facility (CLAF)
• Center for Agricultural Data Analytics
• Fayetteville Agricultural Diagnostic Laboratory
• High Density Electronics Center
• National Center for Reliable Electric Power Transmission (NCREPT)
• Nuclear-magnetic Resonance Laboratory (NMR)
• Statewide Mass Spectrometry Facility
• University of Arkansas for Medical Sciences Core Facilities in Little Rock
• Veterinary Diagnostic Lab
• Arkansas State University (Jonesboro) core facilities
• For additional core facilities within the state, Arkansas Research Alliance Core Facilities Exchange (CFE) is an online platform that shows research instrumentation and accompanying services available at laboratories across the state.

The Arkansas Agricultural Experiment Station is committed to supporting researchers in grant development and grant writing.

Faculty with a majority appointment in the Arkansas Agricultural Experiment Station must submit grants through the Arkansas Agricultural Experiment Station’s grants office. For information, forms, and other resources, visit the Arkansas Agricultural Experiment Station’s grants office.  The experiment station’s research development specialist is also available to help faculty improve their grant-seeking and grant-writing skills. Learn more about the experiment station’s grant writing and research development resources.

Faculty with a majority campus appointment (UAF) must submit their grants through the UAF Campus’s Office of Sponsored Programs.

ALL faculty, regardless of affiliation, can take advantage of funding search tools and other resources offered by the Office of Research and Innovation, including the Office of Sponsored Programs. One particularly valuable resource is GrantForward, a search engine and database of funding opportunities and collaborators.

For special information on grant opportunities from state commodity boards such as the Arkansas Soybean Promotion Board or the Corn and Grain Sorghum Board, please see visit the Commodity Board Grants page.

At the end of each calendar year, faculty in the Division of Agriculture are required to submit short summaries called Impact Statements that communicate the relevance of our work to the general public. Each Impact Statement typically focuses on a single, discreet project, but faculty are welcome to submit more than one impact statement per year if they wish.

These Impact Statements are part of the annual review process and are also used by the Division of Agriculture’s communications team to develop news releases and other promotional media. Deadlines for submitting Impact Statements will be released annually in a memo each Fall semester. Please refer to the following resources when writing your Impact Statements:

• Download Impact Statement Template
• Examples of Dos and Don’ts for Impact Statements

Below is a brief presentation about how to write a great impact statement.

Each Fall Semester, faculty in the Division of Agriculture are required to submit a brief Plan of Work (POW) for the coming year and have it approved by their supervisor. If any significant changes in their job description or plan of work occur over the course of the year, faculty should update their POW with their supervisor’s approval. At the end of each calendar year, faculty are also required to summarize their annual efforts and accomplishments using the Faculty Service Review (FSR) form. The deadlines and templates for the POW and FSR will be announced to faculty by unit heads each Fall semester.

Please see the UADA policies website  https://uada.edu/about/policies.aspx for more information on  Performance Evaluation and Promotion, including templates for the annual Plan of Work and Faculty Service Review forms.

The Arkansas Agricultural Experiment Station is the statewide research component of the Division of Agriculture at the University of Arkansas.  AES was established under the Hatch Act of 1887, which provides federal funding to assist in agriculture research at Land Grant Universities. This funding is provided by the National Institute of Food and Agriculture (NIFA), which uses the REEPort system to collect information on research productivity and societal impacts.  All scientists/faculty with an AAES appointment of 50% or greater must maintain their own capacity-funded REEport project (sometimes called Hatch projects or CRIS projects) and provide annual reports on their progress.

Visit the REEport Projects help page to learn more.

The university’s one-day new faculty orientation is offered in August. To sign up or request last year’s highly informative slide deck, contact tfsc@uark.edu.

The Office of Faculty Affairs offers other training opportunities, resources and support, including the BRIDGE program for all full-time faculty in their first year (Bridge Program | UA Engage | University of Arkansas (uark.edu). This program includes a workshop series and protocols and support to help the new faculty member’s home department set up an individualized mentoring team.  For more information, contact facdev@uark.edu

The Beginning Investigator Research Development Support (BIRDS) program is offered in Spring semesters by the Office of Research Development in the Division of Research and Innovation. Contact person: Cynthia Sides, Assistant Vice Chancellor of the Division of Research and Innovation (csides@uark.edu, 479-575-5265).

The University of Arkansas Teaching Faculty Support Center offers monthly lunch-and-learn meetings, a teaching camp, and a teaching grant program.  In addition, they can provide external evaluations of teaching for your promotion dossier. Visit their website to learn more.

The Teaching Innovation and Pedagogical Support Center (TIPS) provides extensive support for teaching technology issues and has a library of resources on a wide array of topics from creating a syllabus to using classroom technology.

For questions about Bumpers College classroom technology, create a support ticket online or contact the UADA ITS help desk directly at tickets@uada.edu or 479 575-3420.