January 12, 2017
Questioner: Anonymous
Posed to: Karen Stone, Vice President, General Counsel
The level of risk tolerance that UNF’s General Counsel’s office routinely functions at is much lower than at our sister universities or even R1 universities. This seemingly absolute intolerance for any risk whatsoever may protect UNF, but it results in research progress being seriously hampered as months go by waiting for a contract for acquisition of necessary material to be finalized. Why can we not come up to the level of risk tolerated by universities whose faculty’s research is not imperiled by abnormally long wait times?
Response:
Thank you for bringing this concern to my attention. We try our best to provide timely and effective assistance to all of our clients and if the current process for contract review is not meeting the needs of our research faculty then this is something that needs to be addressed. I would appreciate the opportunity to speak with any faculty or academic administrators with this concern to better understand what has occurred and more importantly to determine if steps can be taken to improve client service in this area. Please email me at kstone@unf.edu or call me at 904-620-1002 so that we can meet to discuss this issue.
