Institutional Review Board (IRB) for the Protection of Human Subjects:

The IRB consists of volunteer staff, faculty, and community members who are the first point of contact when an IRB application is submitted.  Each college in the University has at least one IRB representative who provides the initial review for IRB applications.  It is the college representatives’ job to determine the level of review (exempt, expedited, or full board review) for the application, NOT THE RESEARCHER.  The IRB members possess the requisite knowledge of standards to evaluate protocols for their degree of risk for human participants.  All IRB members additionally act as consultants with researchers to aid them both in application preparation and with specific aspects of working with human participants, such as informed consent and anonymity issues.