FY 2024 Institutional/Departmental Research Expenses

The Office of Strategic Financial Initiatives (SFI) is working to compile data related to the annual submission of the Fiscal Year 2024 NSF Higher Education Research & Development (HERD) survey. The university is required to fully disclose institutionally supported research funding (note that SFI has already gathered all expenditure activity related to sponsored research and development). The NSF HERD survey is very specific with respect to the requirement that research and development (R&D) expenses be from an “institution’s current operation funds that are separately accounted for.” Accordingly, the university needs to include institutionally funded R&D that is incurred as part of a department’s operating account.

To make this process as efficient as possible, SFI is asking departments and colleges to review and disclose which expenditures are separately identifiable for institutionally-funded R&D for the 2024 fiscal year time period (July 1, 2023 – June 30, 2024). These may be in the form of seed funding, start-up packages, bridge funding, and other departmental funds designated for research. SFI expects that the primary sources of accounts for the type of activity would include designated funds as well as gift and endowment accounts –these may be allocated to individual faculty or to departments or colleges as a whole.

The deadline for each college to return their responses to Strategic Financial Initiatives at minduan@bu.edu is Friday, August 23rd.

If you would like more information about which expenses could be considered institutional/departmental research or would like more information about the NSF HERD survey, please contact Min Duan at minduan@bu.edu or 617-353-8084.