Approval is an important and required step in the routing process of a Kuali Research Proposal Development record. In addition to the approvals of the key personnel, CSU requires approval by authorized department and college representatives. Some departments also require proposal pre-approval by a business official.

KR PD Approver Roles:

Department Pre-Approver

This is an optional role. It is up to the department to decide if a Pre-Approver is beneficial to their business process. If a Pre-Approver is designated, there will be one additional step in proposal routing. Department pre-approval and Principal Investigator approval happen concurrently before the department approval step.

Department Approver

Approves the KR PD record on behalf of their unit/department included in the proposal record.

College Approver

Approves the KR PD record on behalf of their college included in the proposal record.

• It is important to keep OSP informed of Approver changes by using the Kuali Research Role Request form. If a designated Approver leaves the department, college or university and the role assignment is not updated, this will cause a delay in the KR PD routing process.

• Recommended practice is to have more than one of each Approver type to prevent delays in the routing process. 

• Only one Approver at each level needs to approve, not every person designated as an Approver for a department or college.

• Only the proposal lead unit’s pre-approver (if applicable) is included in the routing.  

• By default, the routing for a proposal includes department and college approvers for all the units represented by the people included as PI and Co-I. Unit approvers for the Key Personnel ‘key person’ role must be manually activated in that person’s Unit Details section.

To request a KR PD Approver role:

KR PD role requests use the Kuali Build app. 

The link to open a new request is on the OSP website Forms page, in the KR PD Roles section: 

The form requires the requestor to enter a department or college contact for approval – this should be a supervisor, department administrator, college business officer, or Kuali Research stakeholder who understands the work that the requestor needs to do in the KR PD module. 

When completing the KR role request form for any Approver role, the Unit Viewer role should also be selected: KC-PD: Viewer (5010). This role allows the Approver to open/view the proposal record in any status.

Once all approvals for the request are complete, OSP will add the requested roles in the Kuali Person record for the Research application.