The Shared Equipment and Services Recharge Center will be run by the LSB Manager (Aaron Hernandez), who will additionally supervise a 50% staff person. The LSB manager will assist LSB personnel with LSB general lab management tasks (e.g. health and safety coordination, oversight of shared lab spaces and chemical rooms, preparing and posting safety guidelines, diagnosis and repair of facilities, inventory, etc), running and maintaining shared departmental equipment, managing reservations and use of growth chambers, grow rooms, and -80 freezers, training personnel on shared equipment, and administration of charges and fees.

III. Charges

Charges for the Shared Services and Facilities cost center fall into four categories, some with multiple charges. These charges do not include indirect costs that are charged to grants. External users (outside of UW) will incur an additional surcharge (including 15.6% overhead). Charges are summarized in Table 1. Keep in mind that these charges will change slightly, as we need to update salaries for 2019 rates and get approval from MAA. We suggest assuming a 3-4% annual increase in these charges.

1) LSB Lab Space Fees: These charges apply to LSB PI’s (i.e. a faculty member occupying office/ lab room / procedure rooms and conducting research

within LSB) and to courses in LSB making use of LSB facilities. Some fees include the use of shared departmental equipment (locations TBD). Note that these kinds of fees can be included on federal grants with no issues. For those without grant funding, personal funds can be used for these charges as well. There are three kinds of charges, described below:

a) Lab fee: applied to every LSB PI. This charge includes the following services:

• Oversight of shared lab spaces and chemical rooms
• Coordination of health and safety policies
• Managing facilities (e.g. minor repairs)
• Coordinating EH&S surveys

b) LSB equipment fee: applied to all LSB PI’s with ‘wet labs’ (i.e. a cellular / molecular / physiological component). Note this fee is charged in addition to the lab fee (for LSB PI’s), and is on a per lab basis, regardless of the size of the lab or actual use of equipment. In other words, the total charge to LSB PI’s with wet labs is $1000 (500 LSB lab fee + 500 LSB equipment fee). Biology PI’s outside LSB wishing to use equipment in LSB may also choose to pay this fee (minus the LSB lab fee) should they wish access to this equipment. This charge includes the following services:

• Use of LSB autoclaves (both self-serve and staffed) and glassware drying ovens (forced air and gravity fed versions)
• Dishwashing services
• Use of departmental centrifuges and ultracentrifuges
• Use of departmental shaker-incubators
• Access to LSB MilliQ water purification systems
• Use of LSB Nanodrops One & OneC microvolume UV-Vis spectrophotometers
• Use of Bio-Rad ChemiDoc MP touch and Azure C600 imaging systems
• Access to departmental clean benches (1 per floor)
• Use of Ice machines
• Use of LSB grow rooms (pending availability)

c) LSB course equipment fee: Applied to courses requiring access to LSB equipment. Fees apply for each lab section (maximum 24 students). It is expected that these will be covered by course fees. Charges include:

• Use of LSB autoclaves (both self-serve and staffed) and glassware drying ovens (forced air and gravity fed versions)
• Dishwashing services
• Use of departmental centrifuges and ultracentrifuges
• Use of departmental shaker-incubators
• Access to LSB MilliQ water purification systems
• Use of LSB Nanodrops One & OneC microvolume UV-Vis spectrophotometers
• Use of Ice machines
• Use of LSB grow rooms (pending availability)

2) Chambers: Charges are applied per square foot / per month, for use of chambers. Note these charges apply both to LSB and HCK chambers, although we may choose to retire HCK chambers if usage is low. Charges apply to the footprint of the chamber, regardless of how many shelves. Minimal charge is of an entire chamber (sizes vary), but PI’s may choose to split the cost of rentals if they can find other users of additional space (but this is up to them). Charges do not include staff time for setup / cleanup, supplies, or shelves / lighting beyond those standardly available, but do include:

• 2 hours consultation for chamber setup
• Weekly inspection of chambers (external) – e.g. to ensure chambers are on, etc.

3) -80 freezers: The department has four departmentally owned -80 freezers available for two purposes; storage (for users with small footprints who do not need or wish to purchase their own -80 freezer) and emergencies (i.e. failure of PI-owned -80 freezers). See appendix B for where -80 freezers are located. There are two types of fees.

a) Rack rental: applied per rack per month, pending space availability (we have to keep . of each -80 freezer free for emergency use). There are 24 racks / freezer. Charges include:

• The use of 1 rack (each rack is 5”x5”x2” w/o a hinge)

b) Emergency -80 freezer failure. Charges include:

• The use of 24 racks (equivalent to 1 entire freezer), spread across the 4 departmentally owned freezers. Costs will be for using 24 racks regardless of how many racks are used (racks are kept empty and available to provide the service). It is anticipated that the user will move out items within 2 months (e.g. into a new freezer) or rent racks for storage (pending space availability).
• Two hours of staff time to assist in moving items from the failed -80 freezer to the departmentally owned -80 freezer.

4) Staff consultation / training: For staff time above and beyond standard expected needs described above. For example, this could include staff time needed to train and / or supervise students in LSB lab courses or to prepare and execute complex experiments in chambers.

IV. Estimation of Charges

Charging for access and use of departmental equipment represents a change from operations in the past, when maintenance (e.g. service contracts, staff time, repairs) and (often) the cost of the purchase of equipment was fully covered by Biology Departmental funds (e.g. from Indirect Cost Return). There are three interrelated reasons we are moving away from this model. First, with increasingly expensive service contracts, need for staff time to run equipment, and greater needs for equipment in biology research, this model is unsustainable (financially). Second, without a way to recoup costs from internal and external users, the department lacked resources and staff time to properly facilitate the use of these resources and replace them when broken – we anticipate this new model is more sustainable and will provide greater levels of service to users. Finally, a recharge center provides more transparency and equitability towards the use and maintenance of services.

Charges (Table 1) were calculated by the Research Committee, based on estimates of staff time needed to provide services / maintain equipment, staff salaries, supplies, and available departmental resources (e.g. number of chambers, -80 freezers). Salary projections are for 2018, but will be recalculated in spring of 2019 (according to UW MAA requirements) – this will result in some slight changes. Note that the cost center is subsidized by the department (~30-50%, depending on the charge), in keeping with the critical need for this facility by a large number of Departmental users. Charges will be recalculated annually (as required by UW Recharge Center Rules), and will increase over time with salary increases and rising supply costs (we suggest including a 3-4% annual increase). Moreover, cost structures will be reconsidered annually, especially if a) Departmental usage declines and/or b) Biology Department subsidies rise steeply. This could result in charges increasing above that expected from 3-4%. Regardless, LSB researchers should start including lab fees, equipment fees, and fees for anticipated use of chambers / -80 freezers in their grants (Table 1). Similarly, instructors planning the use of LSB equipment in their courses should include these charges (Table 1) when calculating course fees (consult Ben Wiggins).

IV. Justification of Fees

There are of course other models we could use to support the use of shared departmental equipment, especially those in the lab fees and equipment fees, which are flat rates per lab. The research committee considered several, but ultimately settled on a model with flat fees and partial subsidy by the Biology Department. Here, we briefly outline the alternative models and rationale for the choices we made. Note that we can reassess these choices in the future, should our assessment of this change.

1) Full subsidy by the department: With this model, we are unlikely to be able to replace equipment when it gets broken or maintain it. With increasing demands on ICR, this model would inevitably result in decreased departmental support in other areas (e.g. graduate student support, ICR returns to individual PI’s based on grant funding, etc) and opportunity costs.

2) Charges per use (e.g. per centrifuge run, per autoclave run, etc), borne entirely by departmental users of each piece of equipment. We rejected this model for several reasons. Many pieces of equipment are extremely necessary for users, but incur a high cost per use. Charging per use incentivizes the individual purchase of expensive equipment by PI’s that can afford it, which means crowding in LSB, less sharing, and less (overall) availability of equipment to the entire department. Moreover, tracking and charging per individual use is not a practical use of staff time.