The board never meets your study.
It meets your file.
At Grand Canyon University, a doctoral manuscript earns its way to data collection in a fixed order: committee, then academic quality review, then the IRB — and the board reads your application against the proposal AQR already approved. We are independent consultants handling the entire GCU IRB process end to end, every week — the determination and the plan, every document, the submission itself, and every reply to the board until the approval letter. The study stays yours; the docket becomes ours.
The order of review. The board sits at the last desk — and it reads backward.
Docket of record
- IRB application files prepared
- 3,100+
- preparing GCU files since
- 2011
- average rating from the learners and professionals we've served
- 4.8 / 5
- at the desk
- files read every week
The docket: what a GCU manuscript clears before data collection.
Six entries, in the order the College of Doctoral Studies runs them. The order is real — each desk assumes the one before it did its work. Open any entry to see what that reviewer actually reads, and what bounces files at that desk.
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What this desk reads
- Current CITI human-subjects certificates for you and anyone who will touch recruitment, consent or data.
- Names on certificates matching names on the application — exactly.
- The course track GCU's current handbook expects for your role and design.
What bounces files here
- A certificate that quietly lapsed between proposal and application.
- A committee or team change nobody re-papered.
- "Close enough" name mismatches between certificate and protocol.
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What this desk reads
- Problem statement, questions, design, sample and instruments worked into their settled form — drafts iterating in the DC Network under the College of Doctoral Studies.
- Whether the method can actually answer the questions as posed.
- This is where method decisions belong; every later desk only verifies them.
What bounces files here
- Instruments swapped after the committee signed.
- A sample reshaped by convenience that nobody minuted.
- Design changes made "just for the IRB" that the committee never saw.
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What this desk reads
- Alignment down the spine of the manuscript: problem to questions to design to sample to instruments to analysis.
- Content quality, feasibility, instrument provenance and permissions.
- The proposal must clear AQR before the IRB application is filed — the board will read against this approved text.
What bounces files here
- Questions the design cannot answer.
- An instrument with no permission or provenance on file.
- Alignment that holds in the abstract and breaks in chapter three.
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What this desk reads
- One letter per site where recruitment or data collection happens — on letterhead, signed by someone with the authority to grant it.
- What the site actually permits: recruitment, records, rooms, staff time.
- Letters that match the procedures section — the same sites, the same activities, the same words.
What bounces files here
- A site named in procedures with no letter attached.
- A letter that authorizes less than the application describes.
- Signatures without authority — a colleague's yes where an administrator's is required.
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What this desk reads
- The board's first move is comparison: population, sample size, recruitment, instruments, procedures, consent — each checked against the AQR-approved proposal.
- Consent documents, read as promises: what you will collect, what you will keep, who will ever see it.
- How identifiers are recorded, stored, coded and destroyed.
What bounces files here
- Drift — any daylight between application and approved proposal. The single commonest return.
- Consent that promises more, or less, than the procedures deliver.
- Identifier handling described three different ways in three places.
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What this desk reads
- The level of review the federal criteria assign: exempt categories, expedited categories, or the convened board.
- Modifications required — and whether your responses introduce new drift.
- The approval letter that must exist before a single participant is recruited.
What bounces files here
- Recruitment that started while the file still sat with the board.
- Modification responses that quietly rewrite approved procedures.
- Celebrating the letter and missing its conditions.
The classic return is not about ethics. It is about daylight.
By the time the IRB opens your case, AQR has already approved the proposal. The board is not meeting your method for the first time — it is checking your application against a text it trusts. So the commonest return letter has nothing to do with risk and everything to do with drift: an instrument renamed, a sample resized, a consent promise the procedures don't keep.
Four rows hold. One drifts. The drifted row is the return letter.
This comparison is where our work begins, not where it ends. We build the application, the consent documents and every exhibit against the approved proposal, file the case, and answer the board at every turn until the letter arrives — so there is nothing to send back, and nothing for you to chase.
The level-of-review reading.
Federal criteria sort every file into a level of review — exempt categories, expedited categories, or the convened board. Five questions reach most of the answer. Answer them honestly and the reading is honest back — including when the honest answer is that you can file this yourself.
The exhibits that ride with the application.
An IRB application is never filed alone. Each attachment is read as evidence, and each has its own way of failing. This is the manifest we build — drafted, aligned to the approved proposal, and filed with the application.
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Site authorization letters
One per site, on letterhead, signed by someone with the authority to grant access, describing exactly what the site permits. We draft them for the site's signature, matched word for word to the procedures — a letter that authorizes less than the procedures describe is a return, because the board reads them side by side.
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CITI certificates
Current, for every person named on the protocol, on the course track GCU's current handbook expects — with names matching the application to the letter.
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Consent and assent documents
Read as promises. They must offer exactly what the procedures deliver — the same time commitment, the same data, the same confidentiality — at the reading level your population can actually give consent at.
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Instruments and permissions
Every survey, protocol and interview guide exactly as AQR approved it, with the author's permission or license attached. A renamed or lightly revised instrument is drift wearing a costume.
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Recruitment materials
Flyers, emails and scripts in the form the population will actually see — making no promise the consent document doesn't make, and reaching no one the sample section doesn't name.
The whole process, handled. Three moves, one desk.
This site is the doctoral-file desk of an independent consulting practice. We consult across enrollment, program choice, coursework and practicum — and on the IRB we do not stop at advice or a read-through. We handle the entire process, from the first level-of-review determination to the approval letter, every week. You run the study. We run the docket.
First move — the determination and the plan
We read your AQR-approved proposal the way the board will, settle the level of review — not human-subjects research, exempt, expedited or full board — and lay out every document, letter and certificate the case will need before a word is drafted.
Second move — every document, built
The application itself, consent and assent documents, recruitment materials, instruments aligned to the approved proposal, the data-security plan, and site authorization letters drafted for the site's signature — each written against the others, so the board finds no daylight anywhere in the file.
Third move — submitted, and every reply answered
We handle the submission in GCU's current IRB portal, then every reply to the board — revision responses, amendments, and continuing review — until the determination or approval letter is in your hands. Nothing for you to chase, and nothing for you to draft at midnight.
What stays yours: the study, the data, the findings. What stays the board's: the decision — a clean file is the only argument it hears.
The bench.
Three consultants sit on every GCU case. One reads and plans, one builds the documents the board reads as promises, one files and answers the board until the letter arrives. You will know which of them is holding your file at every point.
Caroline Strauss
PhD
Lead consultant — the doctoral docket
Caroline reads every AQR-approved proposal the way the board will, settles the level of review, and writes the plan the rest of the file follows. Nothing is drafted until she has decided what the board is going to ask.
Meredith Kowalski
DNP, APRN
Consent, instruments, data-security
Meredith builds the documents the board reads as promises: consent and assent, the instrument alignment, the data-security plan. A practising APRN, she writes consent the way a clinician would want to read it, and the way a reviewer expects to.
Tessa Galbraith
MSN, RN
Site authorization, submissions, board replies
Tessa drafts the site authorization letters for signature, handles the submission in GCU's current IRB portal, and answers every reply from the board until the letter is in your hands. If the board writes back, it is Tessa who writes first.
Entered on the record.
Four entries from learners and professionals whose files crossed this desk — on drift, on the determination, and on the letter.
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"My first application came back for drift I could not even see. They laid the application next to my approved proposal and showed me four places the two had parted ways. The resubmission went in aligned, and the letter came back without a single modification."
Kristen M., EdD candidate — returned once, then approved
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"I assumed my project was full board because I work on the unit. Caroline walked me through the level-of-review reading and showed why it sat in expedited territory, and the consent Meredith drafted was the first document the board did not touch."
Daniel R., DNP candidate — expedited determination
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"The board asked for a modification on recruitment, and Tessa had the response drafted and aligned to the approved proposal before I had finished reading the letter. I would have liked one more status check along the way, but the process itself was exactly as described."
Angela T., PhD candidate — full-board review, approved after modification
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"I came to them before AQR was even done. They told me plainly that the review was free and that my design might be exempt territory. When AQR approved, the plan was already written and the whole file went in as soon as the proposal cleared."
Marcus L., EdD candidate — exempt determination
What it costs.
Packages are quoted after the free review, so the price answers to your file, not a menu. Three packages, each a fixed fee quoted in writing. The premium is Full Handover: the whole docket off your desk.
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Determination & Plan
The reading, the review-path call, and the document plan against the AQR-approved proposal.
- The level-of-review reading on your approved proposal, in writing: not human-subjects research, exempt, expedited or full board.
- The document plan: every letter, certificate, consent document and exhibit the case will need, and the order to build them in.
- A drift read of anything you have already drafted against the approved text.
Quoted in writing after the free review; a single fixed fee with no hourly billing.
Start with the free review -
The Complete File
Determination & Plan, plus every document and exhibit built and aligned, ready to file.
- The application itself, written against the approved proposal line by line.
- Consent and assent documents, recruitment materials, instruments aligned with permissions attached, the data-security plan.
- Site authorization letters drafted for each site's signature; CITI certificates checked and matched to the protocol.
Quoted in writing after the free review; a single fixed fee with no hourly billing.
Start with the free review -
Full Handover most chosen
The premium: The Complete File, plus the submission in GCU's portal and every reply to the board until the letter. The whole docket off your desk.
- Everything in The Complete File.
- The submission handled in GCU's current IRB portal.
- Every reply to the board: revision responses, amendments, and continuing review, until the determination or approval letter is in your hands.
Quoted in writing after the free review; a single fixed fee with no hourly billing.
Start with the free review
Nine questions the desk answers every week.
Each answer opens with the short version, written to stand on its own. The full list of fifteen — with the longer answers — is on the FAQ page.
Does a GCU dissertation need IRB approval before data collection?
Yes. Any GCU doctoral study that collects data from or about living people — surveys, interviews, observations, or records that can be linked to a person — needs a determination from GCU's IRB before recruitment or data collection begins. Even a study that turns out to be exempt receives that status from the board, not from the researcher.
The order at GCU is committee, then academic quality review, then the IRB. The current sequence, forms and portal steps are set by GCU's current doctoral handbook or IRB portal.
Do I submit to the IRB before or after AQR?
After. At GCU the proposal clears academic quality review first, and the IRB application is then read line by line against that AQR-approved proposal. Filing before AQR gives the board nothing to read against.
The reading and the document plan can begin before AQR finishes, so the file goes in the moment the proposal clears. Confirm the exact sequence in GCU's current doctoral handbook or IRB portal.
What is the most common reason a GCU IRB application is returned?
Drift — daylight between the application and the proposal AQR approved. A renamed instrument, a resized sample, a consent promise the procedures do not keep. The classic return is about alignment, not ethics.
Because the board reads the application against an already-approved text, every section of the file is a comparison. We build every document against the approved proposal so the board finds no daylight — and if a return comes anyway, the response is drafted the same way.
Can I start collecting data before the IRB approves?
No. Not recruiting, not piloting with real participants, not "just collecting while the board reads." Data collected before the approval or determination letter exists cannot be used, and the board treats it as a serious matter.
The letter is the switch. Everything on this desk is aimed at building the file so the switch flips once.
Do I need CITI training?
Yes. GCU expects current CITI human-subjects certificates for everyone named on the protocol, with names matching the application exactly. Which course track applies to your role and design is set by GCU's current doctoral handbook or IRB portal.
The classic slips are a certificate that quietly lapsed between proposal and application, and a committee or team change nobody re-papered.
Do I need a site authorization letter?
If recruitment or data collection happens anywhere you do not control, yes: one letter per site, on letterhead, signed by someone with the authority to grant it, describing exactly what the site permits. The board reads the letter next to your procedures, so the two must match word for word.
A letter that authorizes less than the application describes is a return. We draft site letters for each site's signature, matched to the procedures.
What is the difference between exempt, expedited and full-board review?
They are the three levels of review the federal criteria assign. Exempt covers minimal-risk categories — still a board determination, not a self-declaration. Expedited covers minimal-risk work involving identifiable people, read by a designated reviewer rather than the convened board. Full board means the convened board meets on the file, usually because a protected population or more than minimal risk is involved.
Five questions reach most of the answer; the level-of-review reading above runs them. The determination itself is always the board's.
Is a DNP project treated differently from a PhD or EdD dissertation?
Often, but not automatically. Many DNP projects are single-site quality improvement and may be determined not human-subjects research or exempt; PhD and EdD dissertations that generate generalizable knowledge usually go through the full application at whatever level the criteria assign. Either way the determination is the board's to make, and the current DNP route is set by GCU's current doctoral handbook or IRB portal.
The file's job is to say clearly what the project is and is not — intent, site, population — so the board makes the determination on the right facts.
Do you conduct my research — and what does it cost?
No — the study, the data and the findings stay yours, and the board's decision stays its own. What we handle is the entire IRB process: the determination and plan, every document, the submission and every reply to the board until the letter. The price is quoted in writing after the free application review, as one of three fixed-fee packages — Determination & Plan, The Complete File, and Full Handover, the premium — with no hourly billing.
Prices are not listed because the quote answers to the file in front of us; the pricing page sets out what each package includes and how the quote works.
Start with the free application review. Then we take the whole process from there.
The review is free and the finding is honest: if your file is clean and your category is exempt, we will tell you to submit it yourself. For everything else, the reading becomes the plan — and from that point we handle the entire IRB process, every document and every reply to the board, until the approval letter is in your hands.