NSF slaps school over grant

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A small university in Georgia has agreed to pay back $500,000 of a multi-million dollar grant from the National Science Foundation for failing to accurately document some expenditures associated with the grant program. The NSF alleged that administrators at Fort Valley State University (FVSU), one of Georgia's historically black universities located about 100 miles south of Atlanta, violated the False Claims Act, legislation usually invoked to punish Medicare fraudsters or war profiteers. The NSF claimed that FVSU administrators failed to adequately certify several expenditures in a way that violated the terms of a $2.5 million "Strengthening Undergraduate Preparation in Science, Mathematics, Engineering, and Technology" grant over the course of six years from 2001-1007.

"As far as we can tell, there was no real criminal activity involved in this, but there was clearly some lack of controls in record keeping," said John Millsaps, spokesperson for the board of regents of the University System of Georgia, which brokered the half-million dollar settlement in concert with the US Attorney's Office and NSF. Though details of the questionable expenditures are scant, John Fuchko, chief audit officer for the University System of Georgia, shared with __The Scientist__ some specific examples where FVSU's spending ran afoul of the NSF's requirements for grantees. "There were a lot of documentation issues, particularly as relates to cost-sharing and time and effort reporting," Fuchko said. For example, faculty at FVSU, which has a student body of about 3500, took students on educational trips, including one trip to Epcot Center at the Walt Disney World Resort in Orlando, Florida, that were technically not considered "educational" under the grant's mandates. "It was an educational trip, but because it's the Epcot Center, you can't do that with federal money." FVSU administrators also had electrical repairs made to university facilities without adhering to the NSF mandate that such work be done by staff members at the grantee institution. FVSU, lacking a staff electrician, instead contracted the work out. Fuchko said that the state board of regents conducted its own audit of the grant's handling and failed to find any intentional wrongdoing. "It wasn't fraud. It wasn't malfeasance," he said. "There were certain documentation requirements associated with the grant that the university did not meet. At the end of the day, if you take federal money you have to follow federal rules." Fuchko also noted that FVSU violated some "cost-sharing requirements" stipulated in the grant. Some FVSU faculty working on the grant project had salaries that were paid by the state of Georgia, but the school didn't document this fact properly in yearly reports to the NSF, he said. Acting US Attorney for the Middle District of Georgia linkurl:G.F. Peterman;http://www.justice.gov/usao/gam/usa/index.html told __The Scientist__ that FVSU had already made one payment towards the $500,000 settlement to the NSF and that the remainder was to be paid within the year. But the hefty settlement isn't the end of the story for FVSU. In order to prevent similar grant bookkeeping errors in the future, the university had to agree to set up a grant compliance office at its own expense. ""It's an extra thing that they accrue by way of expenses," said Peterman, who would not quote an exact amount. "It's not an insubstantial figure. It's not a token payment." A spokesperson for FVSU told __The Scientist__ that the university had no comment, and calls and emails sent to FVSU faculty member Sarwan Dhir, who is the grant's principal investigator and director of the school's Center for Biotechnology, were not returned. Susan Carnohan, a spokesperson for the NSF's Office of Inspector General, declined to discuss specific details regarding the case. FVSU executive vice president Canter Brown linkurl:told;http://www.13wmaz.com/news/local/story.aspx?storyid=73461&provider=top local CBS affiliate 13WMAZ last week that "There was no wrongdoing at Fort Valley State." Brown contended that FVSU objected to the NSF's allegations and that the settlement was agreed upon by the state board of regents while university administrators "would have preferred it went to trial."
**__Related stories:__***linkurl:NSF looks at university cost-sharing;http://www.the-scientist.com/blog/display/53970/
[6th December 2007]*linkurl:Uniform grant progress reports?;http://www.the-scientist.com/blog/display/53860/
[14th November 2007]

NSF slaps school over grant

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