Faculty Handbook
Role of the RIOLast updated: 6/19/2009
PROCEDURES CONCERNING ALLEGATIONS OF MISCONDUCT
IN RESEARCH AND CREATIVE ACTIVITIES (Cont.)
These Procedures were approved by the Board of Trustees on April 11, 1997 and revised June 28, 2002 and June 19, 2009.
III. Role of the RIO
The RIO shall coordinate implementation of these Procedures and shall be responsible for their fair and impartial administration. The RIO shall not be an advocate for the Complainant or the Respondent.
The RIO shall serve as an advisor to Inquiry Panels and Investigative Committees. If so requested, the RIO shall provide logistical support, recruit expert witnesses, and arrange for legal advice through the Office of the General Counsel.
When an Allegation involves Research or Creative Activity supported by a federal funding source, the RIO shall see that the University meets all legal requirements to apprise it of the status of an Inquiry or an Investigation into that Allegation. The RIO also shall report regularly to the President, the Provost, and the VPRGS on the status of each Inquiry and each Investigation.
The RIO shall identify the Responsible Administrator. The RIO also shall disqualify any Responsible Administrator, and any potential or sitting member of an Inquiry Panel or Investigative Committee, if the RIO determines that such person has a Conflict of Interest.
The RIO shall take all reasonable and practical steps to obtain custody of all the Evidence needed to conduct the review of an Allegation under these Procedures, inventory the Evidence, and sequester it in a secure manner, except where the Evidence encompasses scientific instruments shared by a number of users. The RIO may take custody of copies of the Evidence on such instruments, so long as those copies are substantially equivalent to the evidentiary value of the instruments. The RIO will give the Respondent copies of, or reasonable, supervised access to, the Evidence.
Misconduct Proceeding Records will be kept in a secure room, accessible only to the RIO’s administrative staff. The RIO shall keep all Misconduct Proceeding Records for at least seven years after the completion of the Misconduct Proceedings to which they relate, except that the RIO shall keep Preliminary Assessment reports and related Misconduct Proceeding Records for three years after the completion of the Preliminary Assessment to which they relate and then destroy them.
Other RIO responsibilities are set forth elsewhere in these Procedures.
Provisions regarding the selection, reporting responsibilities, and evaluation of the RIO are set forth in the Appendix.