A. OBJECTIVEThe Administrative Core provides overall leadership, management and direction for the Center and coordinatesthe various components of the Center leading to an integrated, cohesive organization. Specifically, theAdministrative Core has the following objectives:Strategic Planning: The Director and the Executive Committee are responsible for major decisions regardingthe research direction of the DDRC. These decisions are informed by consultation with the Internal andNational Advisory Boards. Over the last five years the Executive Committee has had a major role in evaluatingand shaping the core modifications put in place in the last competitive application and described elsewhere inthis application. Strategic planning efforts have also included the integration of the DDRC with the newCarolina Institute. Over the next five years the DDRC Administrative Core will interact with the planning andadministrative efforts of the Carolina Institute. Plans are underway to form a National Advisory Board for theInstitute in the spring of 2008. This Advisory Board will make recommendations about all aspects of theInstitute - 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 leadershipof the Institute and its components, in planning integration and development of this new organization. It isanticipated that initially components of the Institute (the DDRC, CDL, TEACCH, FSN) will continue withindependent administrative infrastructures but over the next five years integration of these administrativeefforts will be explored. Thus the DDRC Leadership will continue to have an important role in strategic planningfor the Center.Management: The Core coordinates all DDRC activities and sets policies that govern the Center. The Directormanages day-to-day operations and assists the Core Directors in order to insure the efficient administration oftheir 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 asadmission 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 operatingpolicies of the Center. The Executive Committee meets regularly throughout the academic year.Communication/Education: The Administrative Core coordinates regular business and educational meetingsfor Center Investigators through the annual business lunch, monthly Investigator Forum, and annual DDRCResearch Symposium. In addition there are regular communications available by mail, list serve and throughour Center website (www.NDRC.unc.edu). These and other activities by the Administrative Core serve topromote contact and collaboration among investigators. The Administrative Core will continue to interact withAUCD and the AUCD website. Ms. Iris Greene, Program Assistant, will be responsible for interfacing with theAUCD administrative offices to maintain the AUCD website.With the establishment of the Carolina Institute there will be substantially more opportunities for disseminationof information and education to practitioners as well as the general public. As described elsewhere in thisapplication, the TEACCH Program and UNC CDL have extensive clinical training programs in autism and otherneurodevelopmental disabilities, at all levels of clinical care. Both have well-developed educational programsfor service providers as well as the community, including the joint fall conference put on annually by TEACCHand the Autism Society of North Carolina and the Annual May Meeting put on by TEACCH for clinicians andresearchers from within and outside of North Carolina. Also, the TEACCH, DDRC, CDL and FSN websites willbe integrated to provide a more comprehensive overview of efforts in research, education and service inMRDD to the public, providers and other researchers.Quality Assurance: The Director and Executive Committee are responsible for oversight of the quality of theResearch Cores through regular, informal review as well as a more formal annual Committee Review and UserSurvey. 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 comeup 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 toreview all aspects of their service, including quality control. Quality assurance is also established in ourperiodic 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 theallocation of resources and money to this end, at UNC and in the local community. The Center has enjoyedconsiderable success in this regard with the establishment of the Carolina Institute, including building a new17,000 sq ft building for clinical services and clinical training in MRDD (to house the CDL) adjacent to theexisting 13,000 sq ft Autism Center, which houses several DDRC autism clinical research efforts, the ChapelHill TEACCH Clinic and the TEACCH Administrative offices. Additional success can be seen in the largenumber 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 effortsand has put forward a proposal from the Institute for substantial state funding with the annual overall requestfrom the University. In addition, as noted above, advocacy is a strong component of the new partners of theDDRC within the Carolina Institute - the CDL, TEACCH Program and the FSN. The DDRC will join togetherwith these groups in advocating to raise the level of visibility of MRDD research in the UNC and surroundingcommunity.
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