August 7. 2009

Dear Faculty and Graduate Students,

Effective immediately, we no longer have a departmental Human Subjects Committee.  All research involving human subjects will instead be reviewed by the university IRB.  This was confirmed for me today by Dr. Rosemary Wander, Vice Provost for Graduate Studies and Research.

The IRB website http://www.american.edu/provost/osp/IRB.cfm has been revised to show the forms and procedures associated with the new policy.  Earlier forms will not be reviewed. 

If you work with human subjects, or teach a class in which the students do so, please take a look at the website and familiarize yourself with the forms, the supplemental forms needed for certain kinds of studies, deadlines for applications to be considered at particular IRB meetings, the various categories of review (exemption, expedited, full review....), etc.  Once you have done that, if you have questions, you can contact any of the following:

Rosemary Wander, Vice Provost for Graduate Studies and Research

rwander@american.edu

Matt Zembrzuski, IRB coordinator

zembrzus@american.edu

Dolores Koenig, Prof. of Anthropology and IRB chair

dkoenig@american.edu

Dave Haaga, IRB member

dhaaga@american.edu

Dr. Wander and Mr. Zembrzuski are arranging IRB training sessions for faculty and grad students, to be held 9/10/09 and 9/15/09.  More details to follow on those.

Thanks,

Dave Haaga