Portland State University

Portland State University (PSU) is Oregon’s largest and most diverse public university located in the heart of one of America’s most progressive cities. Nearly two decades ago, PSU embraced a new approach to education—one that made the community an active partner in the classroom. Today, they are harnessing the strengths of community engagement to establish PSU as a leading urban research university. Through strong alliances with industry, government agencies, and other universities, they serve as a catalyst for innovation and prosperity for the region. To effectively grow their research enterprise, PSU determined an electronic research administration (eRA) solution was needed to improve productivity, increase oversight, and create a single, reliable source for proposal, award, and compliance information.

In the past few years, PSU has undergone an enormous change in research administration, from a reorganization and process analysis to new executive leadership. At the same time, they were managing grant and research activities with manual processes, including the use of multiple databases and dozens of spreadsheets, and staff were walking proposals in paper form around campus.

Their leadership had very little insight into proposals and awards information, and without automated approval workflows or integrations with their human resources and financial systems, data integrity was a concern. Finding an eRA to improve productivity, increase oversight, and create a single, reliable source for proposal, award, and compliance information became a high priority. But, with a limited budget, they needed an affordable turnkey solution to meet their needs.

In November 2013, PSU selected Kuali Research to deliver their electronic proposal routing, awards tracking, and compliance management. Kuali’s cloud-based delivery—combined with training, implementation, and ongoing support services—also provided PSU an accelerated deployment with minimal campus IT involvement.