Attendees: Jerry Lin, Eileen Curl, Ruthie Robinson, Emily Born, Clayton Jeffryes, Audrey Zhao, Judi Mann, Allan Moore, Shannon Jordan,
Not in Attendance: Nandu Radhakrishnan, Kaye Shelton
I. Call to Order: Dr. Curl at 12:32pm.
II. Introduction of Yu (Audrey) Zhao. New board member for the College of Business from Management Information Systems.
III. Approval of Minutes: June 3, 2020 (The Sept. 8, 2020 meeting was re-scheduled to Oct. 13 due to schedule changes with the Hurricane Laura evacuation and no full board applications.)
Minutes approved unanimously by the committee.
IV. Updates from the Office of Research and Sponsored Programs Administration (ORSPA):
a. Jerry Lin - Associate Provost for Research: Going to back to the original description for membership to the IRB.
i. Membership from each college
ii. IRB Requests – will let Emily expand on this instance.
b. Emily Born, Compliance Officer (IRB Analyst)
Received a request from a local infra-red camera company and I believe that several faculty members are in talks with the company to use their products. The company wants to collect data while the cameras are in place. We normally do not do this unless they are working with a faculty member and it would be a collaborative effort with the faculty member and the company. I don’t know if you have any questions. We do have external researchers wanting to use the Lamar population, but they already have an approved IRB from their institution. No questions were voiced by board members.
c. Beverly Kemp, Research Coordinator
i. Refresher on requesting access to Cayuse. The default says: account has been disabled. This means students or faculty do not have access to Cayuse. Information on obtaining access to Cayuse can be found on the IRB Human Subjects webpage under frequently asked questions: Cayuse Access.
ii. We have a training instance for Cayuse. This training instance is available for the LU community to use to when someone who is submitting an IRB wants to see how the software functions and flows. We encourage everyone to use this feature if they are wanting to see how it works. Using the production (live) IRB instance to see the software functions can skew IRB reporting numbers. When IRB’s are created in the production instance, they are assigned an IRB number. Those numbers are part of our reporting feature. Even if the IRB never goes to approval, they are recorded in such a way which makes our report produce inaccurate numbers. If a person would access to the training instance, please have them contact me.
V. List of Approved Expedited Studies
FY20 there were 16 expedited approved reviews. FY21 there has been 1 expedited approved review. List of expedited approved studies was emailed to IRB members.
VI. Board Member Positions
a. Report from Dr. Lin on the Ad-hoc IRB Membership Committee Eileen Curl, Jerry Lin, Emily Born, Vidisha Worley, and Alan Moore
Eileen Curl: Met over the summer and I would like to discuss this further during the meeting
b. Discuss number of board members (see approved policy)
Eileen Curl: Part of the IRB membership says that we are required by the federal government to keep 5 members. Our policy states 9. We need to revise this.
The other piece is that we have a chair and a vice chair. There was discussion in our ad-hoc meeting about not having a vice chair. I would lean more to keeping the vice chair in the event the chair is not able to attend the meeting, the meeting could meet with the vice-chair leading the meeting.
Do we feel comfortable decreasing to 5 members, where each college has one member except for the 2 larger colleges? This change would move the Arts and Sciences and Education Colleges from 3 members to 2 members.
Emily Born: I know we discussed this as to keep the committee small so as not to interfere with other commitments across campus. We can always pull in someone to offer their expertise, but they would not be able to vote.
Judi Mann: Are two members going to be enough for those colleges.
Allan Moore: If they are trained and learn the research, 2 would be OK. But if they are not, then it would be difficult.
Eileen Curl: I prefer to decrease the membership as members terms expire. We could go to the 2 members as mentioned to make sure there is representation accordingly. We will keep this on the agenda for the next meeting so we have time to think about it and propose a vote.
c. Vice-Chair of IRB
Allan Moore: I agree with Dr. Curl, we do need a vice chair to continue the meetings in the event the chair cannot meet. I think this is a smart plan to have.
Jerry Lin: I agree as well, and our policy states it so let’s continue with the vice-chair position.
VII. Full Board Review of IRB Application
No full board review currently required. There was one full board application discussed at the prior meeting that was tabled. Emily Born provided an update.
Emily Born: The researchers have gone another route as there were multiple issues with the original plan. They went with data that were already collected and de-identified. The application was changed to expedited and it has already been submitted and approved. The full board application has been withdrawn.
VIII. Online Survey Platform at LU
a. Qualtrics Surveys: Emily Born: 50% of research applications use Qualtrics, 20% use mail surveys, the remaining use Google or Survey Monkey.
Eileen Curl: We need review our policy; I believe it says Qualtrics is recommended.Emily Born: I thought we took it out, but I will double check.
b. Other options to meet researchers’ needs: No other discussion.
IX. CITI Certification for Board Member
Reminder: Board Members need to complete the CITI IRB Members Course to satisfy the requirements for the SBE and BioMed courses.
X. Other Business Items
a. Proposed Meeting dates for 2021: Feb. 9, April 11, July 13, September 14, November 9
Eileen Curl: I want to make sure that we are meeting during the peak times for submissions. If we met in February this would be helpful as the PI’s are back on campus and projects are being completed. We could change September to October.
Since there is no opposition, we will leave the meetings as listed in the agenda.
b. Best meeting time
Eileen Curl: Is the 12:30pm time still OK?
All committee members agreed to keep the time at 12:30.
Next meeting: Nov. 10, 2020 at 12:30 pm if an application requiring full board approval is submit prior to the meeting.
Meeting adjourned by Eileen Curl at 1:26pm.