The bench: three consultants, one desk, every GCU file.
One reads and plans. One builds the documents the board reads as promises. One files and answers the board until the letter arrives. This page is who they are and how the desk passes a file between them.
The short answer
Three consultants sit on every GCU case. Caroline Strauss, PhD, reads the AQR-approved proposal the way the board will and writes the plan. Meredith Kowalski, DNP, APRN, builds consent and assent, the instrument alignment and the data-security plan. Tessa Galbraith, MSN, RN, drafts the site authorization letters, handles the submission in GCU's current IRB portal and answers every reply from the board. The file moves between them in that order, and you are told at each hand-off who is holding it.
Caroline Strauss
PhD
Lead consultant — the doctoral docket. The first move: the determination and the plan.
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. Her reading works the way the federal criteria work — living people, identifiers, protected populations, intent, interaction — and it ends in a written finding, including the finding that a clean exempt file can be submitted without us.
She came to IRB work from the methods side, supervising the alignment of problem, questions, design, sample and instruments down the spine of a manuscript, which is the same alignment the board checks when it reads an application against the approved proposal. On a returned file she reads the board's letter first and the application second, because the letter usually says where the daylight is. Caroline also holds the practice's working knowledge of how GCU's process changes — handbook revisions, portal changes, what the board has started asking for — and it is her note that goes out on the docket notice when something moves.
Meredith Kowalski
DNP, APRN
Consent, instruments, data-security. The second move: every document, built.
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 — the same time commitment, the same data, the same confidentiality the procedures actually deliver, at a reading level the population can genuinely give consent at.
Her other discipline is sameness. Identifiers are described one way in the application, the consent and the data-security plan; instruments appear exactly as AQR approved them, with the author's permission or license attached; recruitment materials promise nothing the consent does not. Most DNP files cross her desk with a quality-improvement question inside them, and she is the one who makes sure the file says clearly what the project is — and is not — so the board can make the determination on the right facts. When she is finished, any two documents in the file can be laid side by side and say the same thing.
Tessa Galbraith
MSN, RN
Site authorization, submissions, board replies. The third move: submitted, and every reply answered.
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. She reads a modification letter the way the board wrote it — point by point, in order — and her replies answer each point without touching a sentence the board did not ask about, because a response that rewrites approved procedures is how a second return is earned.
Before the file is ever submitted she runs the site letters: who at each site actually has the authority to sign, what the letter must permit for the procedures to stand, and the letterhead and wording the board will read next to the application. After approval, amendments and continuing review stay on her desk in Full Handover. Tessa is also the consultant most likely to be the one replying to you by email during a live file; the contact page explains what you will hear and when.
How the desk works
A file has one holder at a time, and it moves in one direction. That is the whole method; the rest is detail.
One holder at a time
When your file arrives — through the free application review — it goes to Caroline for the reading. When the reading becomes a plan and you accept a written quote, the file moves to Meredith, who builds the documents against the plan and the approved proposal. When the file is complete and passes the side-by-side test, it moves to Tessa for the submission and everything after. At each hand-off you are told who now holds the file and what they are doing with it. Nobody works on the file in parallel without telling you; that is how drift gets into a file from our side, and we do not allow it.
What you hear, and when
You hear from us at the moments that matter: when the reading is done, when the plan is written, when each document is ready for your eyes, when the file is ready to submit, when the board writes back, and when the letter arrives. Between those moments, the chat on every page reaches the desk, and hello@gcuirb.com reaches it too. We do not put a clock on any of these, because the board's clock is not ours to set — what we promise is that nothing sits on this desk unread.
What we will not do
- Conduct your research, collect your data, or author a word of your findings. The study is yours and your committee's; our part is the file that earns it permission to begin.
- Predict or promise what the board will decide. The board's decision is its own, on the file it reads.
- File anything in your name without your sign-off, or contact GCU about you without your instruction.
- Begin drafting before the reading is done. The plan comes first, always.
Beyond the IRB
This site is the doctoral-file desk of a wider independent consulting practice that works with candidates across enrollment, program choice, coursework and practicum. On the IRB we do not stop at advice or a read-through; the whole process — described move by move — is what we handle. The practice is not affiliated with Grand Canyon University, the College of Doctoral Studies or the university's IRB.