All research requests must be reviewed by the Institutional Review Board or its designee. This procedure is intended to ensure that all individuals who may be affected by the research can be certain that the research is sound and does not violate board policy, college operating procedures, or federal regulations concerning protection of living participants.
All research activity that involves Southeastern Community College and living subjects must comply with IRB guidelines regardless of whether the activity is externally funded or not, whether it involves minimal risk or greater than minimal risk or not, and whether it is conducted by students, staff, faculty or visitors.
Data generated as a part of approved Southeastern Community College course work such as collection of laboratory data, information collected from tests, journal entries, class surveys, measurements obtained in health classes, and other similar data collected solely from students in that class that will not be published nor be presented outside Southeastern Community College, do not have to go through the IRB process as this activity was approved as part of the curriculum. If the data generated as a part of course work will be gathered from living subjects not in the class, if the data will be published or if the data will be presented outside Southeastern Community College, then the research will have to go through the IRB process.
The President’s Administrative Team will appoint five members to serve on the institutional review board with sufficient diversity with respect to gender, race, cultural background and professional expertise. Members need to be familiar with potential groups that are participants of studies and be capable of advocating on their behalf. These members should include a faculty member with a background in a scientific area, a faculty member with a background in a non-scientific area, someone with research expertise, someone with an administrative background and may include someone from the community such as a retiree of SCC. Additional faculty or staff members may serve in an advisory capacity where appropriate. Members will serve an indefinite term until replaced by the President’s Administrative Team.
IRB members may not vote on their own projects.
Institutional Review Board Approval Procedure and Criteria for Approval
The researcher must file a research proposal form with the office of the college president. After receiving the completed request from the researcher the proposal will be sent to the IRB who will verify the following items:
Adopted:
Revised:
Reviewed: February 16, 2020