External Activity Request Frequently Asked Questions

This process follows Kansas Board of Regents policy and is designed to allow review by appropriate supervisors and offices to ensure that conflicts of time and conflict of time commitment are properly managed, and that activities with outside entities do not violate the University’s policy on transactions with restricted parties. This helps to ensure appropriate balance between university responsibilities and external professional activities, in accordance with KBOR policy, and to protect and inform deans, chairs, faculty and staff of potential risks inherent with consulting or external activities in certain disciplines, companies, or countries, and the process enables taking appropriate precautionary measures as necessary.

Any faculty or staff member who engages in any of the external activities outlined in Question 3 below. Faculty and staff engaging in those external activities described in Question 4 do not need to submit a request.  

External professional activities that require prior University approval are activities in which the external entity has a professional, commercial, or financial interest in seeking the expertise and services of a faculty or staff member.

Examples of activities for which this prior approval is required may include: consulting for a company, private entity, or individual; providing expert testimony; and acting as an investigator on sponsored projects that are managed through another organization.   

NOTE: Regular instructional service or any agreement to provide professional services to other educational institutions is prohibited without express prior approval.

It is understood that certain external professional activities are done in the course of carrying out expected university duties, and for these outside activities, university prior approval is not required. For faculty, such activities should be reported in the annual faculty evaluation process.

Examples of activities for which prior approval is not required include:

• Service to the discipline/profession: peer review of scholarly, artistic or creative works; external program reviews; grant proposal review; editorial board work for scholarly outlets; serving as an officer of a scholarly/professional organization; service or scholarly presentations/seminars at disciplinary/professional society meetings, educational institutions, U.S., state, or local government agencies or not-for-profit organizations.
• Research/scholarship/creative activity: scholarly presentations; artistic/creative performances, presentations, masterclasses, or exhibitions of artistic or creative work.

No. Any activity that requires prior approval as listed above must have approval requested via this process, regardless of compensation or time commitment.

Yes. This request form does not replace any requirement to disclose financial interests.

Please refer to Conflict of Interest Reporting and Management for KU requirements and the Office of the Secretary of State for State of Kansas requirements.

Conflict of interest disclosures do not replace this form, please see our guidance in questions 5 and 6 to determine if you need to fill out this request.

As this process is entirely digital, there is no longer a need for any printing, scanning, getting signatures or email permissions. 

Once you submit your request, you can’t add information or modify any information that you have submitted. You will need to start a new request incorporating the changes your chair/director or dean has requested.

This process was designed via collaboration between the KU offices of Faculty Affairs, Global Export Control, International Programs, Research, KU IT, and Enterprise Project Management.

The process was marked as a high priority project by the Chancellor due to the need to reduce risk for both faculty & staff members and the University, and included input from the deans and university governance. 

First, Global Operations & Security and the Office of Research Conflict of Interest team will review your request, and add comments when necessary for both faculty and staff. For faculty, the request will then go to your department head for comments and approval, then to your dean for comments and approval, and finally to the Vice Provost for Faculty Affairs for comments and approval. For staff, the request will be routed to your department head or director and then to the Vice Provost of Operations for final approval.

No. Only your department head, dean, and the Vice Provost for Faculty Affairs and Vice Provost of Operations can deny requests.

Global Operations and the Conflict of Interest office can only add comments.

This request is for prior approval, so any request must be approved before an activity begins. Please make sure and allow enough time for approvals to occur prior to your activity beginning.

The current estimate is 5-10 business days, with no more than 2 business days at any one review point. Please note that this is an estimate, and it is possible that some requests may take longer. 

Both faculty and staff may check the status of a request by contacting Faculty Affairs at facultyaffairs@ku.edu. 

At the end of the process, you will get back a copy of the form with all of the comments that have been left for you by all of the reviewers. If your request has been denied, please note that it will not have been seen by anyone further along in the process – i.e. if your chair or director denies the request, neither the dean nor the Vice Provost will see it, and so on.

After you mark a request either approved or denied, you must still “route forward” to get it to the next step in the process.

You will find a detailed guide to the Perceptive Experience web app here. 

If you need more information, you must contact the submitter outside of the approval system (i.e. via email).

You can copy any additional information you have received into the Comments portion of the online form before “routing forward.” If you want to attach an email or document from the submitter, you can save the document/email to your workstation and then follow the “Add a page” steps in this quick start guide.

To make changes to the submission itself, the submitter must make a new request. Add a comment to that effect (“faculty member needs to rewrite & submit new request”) and Deny the request before “routing forward.” This will record the request for a rewrite in the system, and send an email to the submitter with all comments. They will then have to submit a new request taking into account those necessary changes. “Denied” requests will still be accessible in the employee’s file in Perceptive Experience.

This process follows Kansas Board of Regents policy and is designed to allow review by appropriate supervisors and offices to ensure that conflicts of time and conflict of time commitment are properly managed, and that activities with outside entities do not violate the University’s policy on transactions with restricted parties. This helps to ensure appropriate balance between university responsibilities and external professional activities, in accordance with KBOR policy, and to protect and inform deans, chairs, faculty and staff of potential risks inherent with consulting or external activities in certain disciplines, companies, or countries, and the process enables taking appropriate precautionary measures as necessary.

As this process is entirely digital, there is no longer a need for any printing, scanning, getting signatures or email permissions necessary. You will be able to see comments from both Global Operations and the Office of Research before making the decision to approve or deny a request. Also, it is easier to retrieve previous requests for reference during the review process.

Perceptive Experience is entirely web-based so there is no software to install. Simply click on the link in the email you received and it will open in your browser. You must be on the Jayhawk Network. If you are working remotely, please connect to the VPN.

No. The system will automatically detect if that is the case, and you will only need to do one review.

Anyone who can access the form for review, including the submitter and other reviewers.