A. OBJECTIVE The Administrative Core provides overall leadership, management and direction for the Center and coordinates the various components of the Center leading to an integrated, cohesive organization. Specifically, the Administrative Core has the following objectives: Strategic Planning: The Director and the Executive Committee are responsible for major decisions regarding the research direction of the DDRC. These decisions are informed by consultation with the Internal and National Advisory Boards. Over the last five years the Executive Committee has had a major role in evaluating and shaping the core modifications put in place in the last competitive application and described elsewhere in this application. Strategic planning efforts have also included the integration of the DDRC with the new Carolina Institute. Over the next five years the DDRC Administrative Core will interact with the planning and administrative efforts of the Carolina Institute. Plans are underway to form a National Advisory Board for the Institute in the spring of 2008. This Advisory Board will make recommendations about all aspects of the Institute - including clinical services, education, research and the interaction of all three of these components. The DDRC Leadership will be in close contact with this National Advisory Committee as well as the leadership of the Institute and its components, in planning integration and development of this new organization. It is anticipated that initially components of the Institute (the DDRC, CDL, TEACCH, FSN) will continue with independent administrative infrastructures but over the next five years integration of these administrative efforts will be explored. Thus the DDRC Leadership will continue to have an important role in strategic planning for the Center. Management: The Core coordinates all DDRC activities and sets policies that govern the Center. The Director manages day-to-day operations and assists the Core Directors in order to insure the efficient administration of their units. This goal is accomplished together with the Executive Committee, which, along with the Director, comprise the senior management of the Center. The Executive Committee is responsible for such decisions as admission of new investigators and projects, services to be provided through the Research Cores, dissemination of information from the Center to the public and to other investigators and general operating policies of the Center. The Executive Committee meets regularly throughout the academic year. Communication/Education: The Administrative Core coordinates regular business and educational meetings for Center Investigators through the annual business lunch, monthly Investigator Forum, and annual DDRC Research Symposium. In addition there are regular communications available by mail, list serve and through our Center website (www.NDRC.unc.edu). These and other activities by the Administrative Core serve to promote contact and collaboration among investigators. The Administrative Core will continue to interact with AUCD and the AUCD website. Ms. Iris Greene, Program Assistant, will be responsible for interfacing with the AUCD administrative offices to maintain the AUCD website. With the establishment of the Carolina Institute there will be substantially more opportunities for dissemination of information and education to practitioners as well as the general public. As described elsewhere in this application, the TEACCH Program and UNC CDL have extensive clinical training programs in autism and other neurodevelopmental disabilities, at all levels of clinical care. Both have well-developed educational programs for service providers as well as the community, including the joint fall conference put on annually by TEACCH and the Autism Society of North Carolina and the Annual May Meeting put on by TEACCH for clinicians and researchers from within and outside of North Carolina. Also, the TEACCH, DDRC, CDL and FSN websites will be integrated to provide a more comprehensive overview of efforts in research, education and service in MRDD to the public, providers and other researchers. Quality Assurance: The Director and Executive Committee are responsible for oversight of the quality of the Research Cores through regular, informal review as well as a more formal annual Committee Review and User Survey. The Director is responsible for advising and guiding Core Directors in the cost effective, state-of-theart, quality operation of all Research Cores, as discussed in each respective Core Section. These issues come up ad hoc in regular Executive Committee meetings as well as the more format spring review of each core (prior to the submission of the non-competitive renewal). Each Core has established an Advisory Group to review all aspects of their service, including quality control. Quality assurance is also established in our periodic site visits by the National Advisory Board (last joint on-site review took place in the fall of 2006). Advocacy: A major goal of the DDRC is to raise the visibility of MRDD research at UNC and increase the allocation of resources and money to this end, at UNC and in the local community. The Center has enjoyed considerable success in this regard with the establishment of the Carolina Institute, including building a new 17,000 sq ft building for clinical services and clinical training in MRDD (to house the CDL) adjacent to the existing 13,000 sq ft Autism Center, which houses several DDRC autism clinical research efforts, the Chapel Hill TEACCH Clinic and the TEACCH Administrative offices. Additional success can be seen in the large number of new investigators joining the Center (described elsewhere). The UNC School of Medicine is committed to seeking state funds for all aspects of the Carolina Institute efforts and has put forward a proposal from the Institute for substantial state funding with the annual overall request from the University. In addition, as noted above, advocacy is a strong component of the new partners of the DDRC within the Carolina Institute - the CDL, TEACCH Program and the FSN. The DDRC will join together with these groups in advocating to raise the level of visibility of MRDD research in the UNC and surrounding community.
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