All investigators and key personnel involved in research and sponsored programs must complete specific research ethics courses using the CITI training program when required by SOU policies or federal regulations as listed below.
Collaborative Institutional Training Initiative (CITI)
All SOU faculty, staff, and students are eligible to take CITI trainings. Be sure to use your SOU email address to register your CITI account. If you have an existing CITI account and have an affiliation with a previous institution, you will need to add SOU to your affiliations. Once you follow the registration instructions, select the courses you are required (or would like) to take according to five topics below that correspond to the question numbers in CITI.
When CITI Research courses are required:
1. Human Subjects Research, a specific course from CITI, is required if you are key personnel when submitting an IRB application*. Your IRB protocol will not be approved without documented completion of this course. You will be asked to select biomedical HS research, social and behavioral HS research. Please select the best fit for your active or proposed research application(s). IRB member and Institutional Signatory Official should select those options at question 1 for their training.
2. Responsible Conduct of Research is required of all personnel (PIs, co-investigators, students, post docs) paid by NSF and NIH research grants. This course fulfills SOU's responsible and ethical research training required for NSF and NIH also requires 8 hours in-person training that should be documented. This course is recommended as an overview for undergraduate researchers.
3. Conflicts of Interest is required if you are a Principal Investigator or Project Director for any sponsored project.
4. Laboratory Animal Research is required if you are key personnel on an IACUC application, including wildlife research*. This training applies to vertebrate animal research generally and you are required to complete species-specific training that applies to your protocol.
5. Good Clinical Practice is required for PIs and co-investigators conducting an intervention (any experimental method including educational studies and not just clinical trials) if funded by an NIH research grant.
*Faculty who teach research methods, senior capstones and mentor or sponsor student projects that involve human subjects and vertebrate animals are required to complete the appropriate CITI courses.
Optional Research Training
Anyone affiliated with SOU (faculty, staff, students with sou.edu email) may take any of the above training even if they are not required. Additionally, CITI offers many other free courses that will be listed when you log in or view additional courses.
