Acting as a faculty sponsor for student research is an important responsibility. Faculty can do research with individual students, or incorporate research projects into their courses. In either case, students are not allowed to do the research independently. Many of our students are working professionals, and some of those are in leadership positions. Even a student who is the Administrator of a school is not allowed to do research at his own school independently. The student is doing research as a student at NSU, not in his capacity as Administrator.
This does not mean that the faculty sponsor must "hover" over the students. We expect faculty sponsors to provide adequate supervision, and leave it up to the faculty sponsor how closely they will supervise students. This can vary between having frequent meetings, and asking about progress from time to time. Many factors influence this decision, including the nature of the project, the maturity of the student, and personal preferences of the faculty sponsor.
Many students do not adequately include the faculty sponsor in the IRB process. They communicate with the IRB without prior discussion with the faculty sponsor, and do not include the faculty sponsor in email communications. We know that this happens, and try to remember to include faculty sponsors in all messages from IRB to students. From your end, we encourage you to tell students/ your class to copy you on all messages to the IRB. Together, we can increase your inclusion in the process.
We have seen instances where faculty members were overwhelmed by trying to take responsibility for gathering all materials and forwarding them to the IRB. Ultimately, it is the students' responsibility that the application and all additional materials, such as signature pages and site permissions, are received by the IRB. Making students responsible for sending them frees faculty sponsors up to teach their classes, and gives students valuable experience in going through the approval process.
Good applications which contain all relevant information do speed up the approval process, but there is a balance between level of perfection and speed of approval. Really bad applications take considerably more time to approve, but trying to make applications perfect takes a lot of time too. Training in the procedures of the IRB helps to improve the quality of applications. Consider having students watch the IRB video on this website (under the Training Video button), or asking the IRB Chair to send an IRB member to your class as a guest speaker.
Finally, thank you for acting as a faculty sponsor. NSU places considerable value on student research, and you help to make this possible. Please consider the NSU IRB as a necessary part of the research process, but also as a resource.