To: All Baruch College faculty, staff, and students

Baruch College is committed to ensuring that human-subjects research is conducted
in ways that are ethical and considerate of the rights and the dignity of the
participants.  The Institutional Review Board (the IRB) plays a particularly important
role in this. The goal of the IRB process is to help ensure the protection of
participants in human-subjects research.  When the process is working well, it has a
corollary: it helps protect researchers and the institution by promoting ethical
behavior.  The IRB is committed to education as the first and foremost part of the
process.

All research conducted with human subjects by Baruch College researchers, or
conducted at Baruch College with human subjects, must receive prior approval by
the IRB.  Such approval is mandated by Federal and state regulations, as well as
policies of the CUNY Board of Trustees.  This requirement applies to all human
research conducted by faculty, by students, and by staff, both funded and non-
funded, and includes pilot projects, survey research, interviews, research that will
not lead to statistical analyses, research involving pre-existing data bases,
institutional research, as well as experimental research.  The only sorts of data
collection with living human subjects that do not require prior IRB approval are those
that are not done for research purposes, typically where the data are not collected in
the interest of generalizable knowledge.  These cases include institutional research
where the data will not be disseminated, in-class exercises done for training rather
than for research purposes, or information collected for artistic purposes, and even
these sorts of data collection should receive prior IRB review if there is any
possibility of risk to participants, including possible risk to reputation.  If you think
your data collection falls into one of these categories, you should contact David
O’Brien, chair of the IRB, for consultation.  Failure to obtain prior IRB approval before
beginning human-subjects research places both the researcher and the institution at
risk, and post-hoc approval is never allowed.

When someone signs an application to the IRB, he or she is taking legal
responsibility for what is contained in the application.  Your signature indicates that
you understand what is contained in the application, and it commits you to ensuring
that the research project is conducted in the same way that is approved by the IRB.
Student research requires the signature of a faculty advisor, and it is the faculty
advisor who is taking ultimate responsibility for the project.  You should not sign an
application to the IRB without knowing exactly what it says and without being willing
to accept full responsibility for it, even when students or staff prepared the
application.

If you have questions about what you need to do to fulfill your ethical and regulatory
responsibilities in conducting human research, or if your unit is interested in
receiving training about the IRB process, feel free to email the IRB Chair, David
O’Brien at [log in to unmask]
The IRB membership includes:
David O’Brien (Chair)
Nancy Aries
Kapil Bawa
Alfred Friedland
Harold Goldstein
Douglas Lackey
Gregg Van Ryzin