Grants and Contracts Administrator

Department

EPIC - Adminstration and Operations

About the Department

The University of Chicago Institute for Climate and Sustainable Growth (ICSG) is a groundbreaking effort uniting faculty from across the university to advance society’s understanding of our energy and climate future. The Institute combines faculty insights in energy markets and policy, climate systems engineering, and energy technology to produce world-changing ideas while also investing in the next generation of energy and climate thinkers, leaders, and innovators through novel educational programs.

Job Summary

The Grants and Contracts Administrator supports both pre-award and post-award grant and contract administration for the Institute. This role involves working closely with faculty, research staff, and administrative offices to manage the lifecycle of sponsored awards. Responsibilities include proposal preparation, budget development, compliance monitoring, financial reporting, and ensuring alignment with university and sponsor guidelines. The Grants and Contracts Administrator works with moderate supervision and demonstrates a solid understanding of University systems and research funding requirements.

Responsibilities

• Serves as the primary grant administrator for assigned department(s) or unit(s), under the guidance of the Director of Finance and Operations and working closely with the Senior Grants and Contracts Manager.
• Collaborates with Principal Investigators (PIs), project staff, and administrative offices to coordinate all pre-award activities, including interpreting sponsor guidelines, preparing, and reviewing administrative components of grant proposals, developing and finalizing budgets, and ensuring compliance with regulatory and institutional requirements.
• Maintains electronic records and databases for proposal and award tracking.
• Coordinates with University Research Administration (URA) regarding all unit pre-award activities and tasks with URA and in AURA Grants.
• Works with faculty to identify new funding opportunities and assists with the development of competitive proposals.
• Provides support for post-award activities as needed including coordinating and providing details through AURA to the account create team for Oracle account creations, regulatory and compliance monitoring, salary allocations, effort reporting, grant projections, cost allocations, cost center charges, equipment inventory, invoice preparation, grant closing process, and account closing.
• Prepares and submits interim and final closing memos to URA through AURA following sponsor award reporting terms and deliverables for financial reporting.
• Manages the execution of Subawards, Sponsored Consulting Agreements, and Subaward Amendments in coordination with URA.
• Processes financial transactions through the University systems (Oracle, Service Now, Workday Payroll Cost Correction system), ensuring alignment with grant budgets and timelines.
• Conducts regular account reconciliations, budget projections, and expenditure tracking. Provides summaries and projections to faculty, research staff, and finance team. Analyzes monthly Orbit grant financial reports for accuracy, recommends and initiates action to correct discrepancies and follow-up until resolved.
• Coordinates timely submissions of sponsor renewals, progress reports, just-in-time documentation, no-cost extensions, and re-budgeting requests.
• Works closely with the Senior Grants and Contracts Manager to collect grant data for the annual budget submission and reporting.
• Assists faculty and staff with review and execution of contracts and data use agreements associated with grants; works to understand needs, assess contract suitability to meeting those needs, and negotiate with vendors to ensure contracts comply with University standards and guidelines.
• Regularly interacts with University Research Administration, Faculty, Postdocs, Human Resources, Financial Services, and other departmental stakeholders.
• Analyzes industry trends and monitors changes in sponsor regulations to ensure departmental compliance with the University.
• Partners with the Senior Grants and Contracts Manager in collecting and analyzing data…