From: 
David W. Niesel,PhD
Lawrence E. Etheridge, Jr. Professor
Senior VP and Dean
Graduate School of Biomedical Sciences
Chief Research Officer

The implementation date for the recently distributed shipping policy has been pushed back to September 01, 2018.  This delay will provide an opportunity for feedback from the research community and time to work with the Chairs and research committees to refine the policy.  This feedback will help guide the revised shipping policy and procedures.  Suggestions from the Town Hall meeting yesterday, consolidated into broad categories, that has been raised thus far includes:

• Any changes to shipping policy and procedures should be flexible to accommodate the diversity in risk of materials shipped from UTMB
• Shipping processes need to be streamlined in light of the administrative burden already on researchers
• Shipping processes have to account for 24/7 shipping needs
• Administration should look into training and monitoring/auditing versus centralization
• Future policies applicable to the research community must include research committee, faculty and chair input prior to implementation

We thank you for your input and will provide an interim status update sometime in July.