Every year in August as the university prepares for a new academic year, we embark on a journey that some at the university once thought was an impossible task: getting more than 2,500 faculty and staff members to successfully submit their annual conflict of interest and commitment disclosures on time. Improving the process and devoting resources to support our faculty and staff members has been key and eliciting help from a group of incredible employees across campus to assist in this effort has made all the difference. Who are these employees? They are Conflict of Interest (COI) Coordinators, individuals assigned by deans and directors to assist our employees in meeting state and federal requirements, and complying with university regulation and policy by submitting annual disclosures on time. Our office has worked very closely with the COI Coordinators over the years, and without them, we never would have achieved 100% compliance with annual reporting these last two years. We also would never have achieved a 96% on-time submission rate last year and a record high 98.4% on-time submission rate this year. To put these numbers into perspective, when University Compliance, Ethics, and Risk acquired oversight of the annual conflict of interest and commitment process, the on-time submission rate was 78% and at that time, UCF had never achieved 100% compliance with annual submissions.
The efforts of this group have been enormous, and that effort comes with little thanks and no extra compensation. Because we appreciate all of their hard work and effort in supporting this very important compliance process, we want to recognize them in this edition of the IntegrityStar. We appreciate all of the COI Coordinators, but a few stand out each year:
Jacquelyn Clarke, College of Engineering and Computer Science
Monika Crittenden, Physics
Lynn Hepner, College of Arts and Humanities
Allison Jefferson, College of Education
Zachary Knauer, College of Sciences
Vanessa Nixon, College of Health and Public Affairs
Elvis Wannamaker, Student Development and Enrollment Services
Thank you all for your outstanding support every year!
If you catch someone doing the right thing, write to us and tell us about it. Who knows, maybe they will be featured in our next IntegrityStar edition.