Kean University Builds Better Processes with Cayuse

Challenge

Kean University is a public university based in New Jersey, serving approximately 18,000 undergraduate and graduate students across five campuses, including three in New Jersey, one in China, and an online program. Over the past several years, Kean’s research capacity and programs have slowly expanded, culminating in the university’s recognition as an R2 Research University in February 2025.

In the lead-up to Kean’s R2 designation, research administration leadership recognized that the department’s existing management workflows and processes needed an upgrade to better facilitate proposal submissions, IRB approvals, and other areas of the research lifecycle. 

Existing systems were split between paper documents, spreadsheet files, a shared Google Drive, and emails. This created issues with delays in processing submissions, time-consuming efforts to keep files organized, organizational siloing, and potential security hazards from decentralized communications and storage. 

“It was not unusual for people to wait months to get a final decision,” recalled Nate Rigel, Kean’s Director of Research Compliance. “I’m not talking about just the regular back and forth. There were cases where you would submit an application, and if you didn’t get it all the way processed and out for the June meeting, the IRB closed shop, and you’re out of luck until September when the academic year starts again.”

Solution

Administrators sought several important features in a new research management system. Ideally, the new system would improve efficiency and accuracy by centralizing previously disconnected processes and workflows, providing a secure and reliable digital platform for award and compliance management. Given Kean’s limited administrative staff, the new solution would need to free more time for administrators and increase efficiency. 

Leadership also wanted a system that would help control who has access to data and proposals, granting easy transparency to those who need it while keeping things closed off from those who should not have visibility into sensitive information. Security and compliance were particularly important concerns given requirements for international research practices in the context of Kean’s China campus. 

Finally, staff hoped that the new digital system would be able to integrate and coexist with existing ERP and HR software, enhancing the university’s digital infrastructure without further fragmenting data and processes into software silos.

After investigating different vendors, Kean selected Cayuse to provide the university’s new management software, starting with Sponsored Projects, Proposals (S2S), and Human Ethics. They were drawn to Cayuse, in particular, thanks to the research suite’s user-friendly interface, integrations with ERP and HR systems, automated workflows to help streamline processes, and the potential for future expansions into other areas of research administration.

Results

Since implementing their Cayuse solutions, administrators at Kean have already seen notable improvements to their workflows, workloads, and overall organization. As Nate Rigel put it, Cayuse “has really helped smooth out operations.”

From a compliance perspective, Cayuse Human Ethics has been well-received by the IRB committee and applicants thanks to the software’s user-friendly interface and streamlined submission and review processes. “It’s really provided some order to the chaos,” Nate commented, “I think that the faculty and users are much happier with the IRB this year than they were last.” 

For example, where there was previously a larger risk of applications being delayed to the next school year due to missed deadlines, Human Ethics’ accessibility and streamlined workflows help avoid the problem by significantly reducing the time spent processing IRB submissions, revisions, and approvals.

In many cases, compliance tasks have been shortened from taking months to complete to requiring mere weeks to finish. This also means that administrators spend less time hounding people for reviews or asking teams to send out their submissions, providing more time and resources to focus on other priorities. 

Additionally, Human Ethics helped to raise awareness of research compliance and its importance, something Nate describes as a “cultural change across campus.”

The Kean team also appreciates the variety of resources and services Cayuse continues to provide well after their completed software implementations. “I wasn’t thinking there’d be this ongoing relationship,” one team member recalled, noting that they’ve appreciated receiving relevant industry updates and invitations to thought leadership webinars from Cayuse.

Additionally, the Cayuse Community has provided a great way to get in touch with other research professionals and Cayuse users around the world to learn more about how they’re leveraging their research management solutions. Questions for the Cayuse team have also received prompt and effective responses, resolving any open issues to ensure an optimal software experience.

Administrators expect that their Cayuse solutions will help maintain the university’s R2 status. According to Nate, “this kind of platform is one of the tools we need if we’re going to expand our enterprise without overloading faculty bandwidth… It’s one way to help mitigate the flood of proposals and IRB applications that an R2 should be dealing with.”

With Cayuse’s transparency, time savings, centralization, and integrations in place, the team at Kean sees the potential for more future growth and increased resilience for the university’s research efforts.