Member onboarding and offboarding is conducted by the Office Administration Team in conjunction with the IRB Member Working Group. Required onboarding/offboarding steps are tracked here. Unaffiliated members get zero-dollar UW-Madison honorary fellowships (how to). This provides wisc.edu email address and access to ARROW.  

The IRB Member roster is maintained via HRP-601 and stored here.  The roster must be maintained by the IRB Office as required by OHRP and the federal regulations. The roster must be updated and then these updates recorded as part of the UW-Madison’s FWA registration within 90 days of any IRB member changes. Prior versions of the roster should be maintained for documentation purposes. Once the IRB Office has revised HRP-601 (SOP here), the roster should be emailed to the ORC (Peter Johnson, johnson3@wisc.edu) and the VA Compliance Officer (Kal Watson, kal.watson@va.gov) so they can update the official records.     

The HS and MRR IRBs consist of 8 total panels, 6 HS IRB panels and 2 MRR IRB panels. Each of the panels are supported by four IRB staff: (1) a Meeting Coordinator (2) In-meeting Office Administrator (3) a Primary Panel Administrator; and (4) a Backup Panel Administrator. More information on panel/meeting roles and responsibilities can be found here. Other related materials can be found in the Panel Administration folder on Box.  Instructions for getting ready for meetings and inviting members is found here.  

Attendance tracking: Initial meeting reminders are sent via the IRBReview email account 2 weeks prior to meeting.  Follow-up reminders are sent a week out to anyone who has not responded.  Responses are logged in the attendance spreadsheets (HS & MRR).  If an alternate is needed, this list can be consulted.    

A week prior to the meeting, reviewer assignments go out to Primary & Backup Admin.  Once assigned, an agenda needs to be created (Agenda Prep SOP). 

Post-meeting:  Meetings need to be closed and minutes created. 30 days after approval minutes can be closed (see created doc).

Meeting scheduling: IRB panel meetings are scheduled for the year according to the general framework for each panel (making accommodations for holidays):  

Minimal Risk Research IRB:

Panel 1 = Second Wednesday of the month  

Panel 2 = Fourth Monday of the month  

Health Sciences IRB:

Panel A = First Monday of month  

Panel B = First Thursday following 1st Monday 

Panel C = Second Tuesday following 2nd Monday 

Panel D = Third Monday of the month 

Panel E = Third Thursday following 3rd Monday 

Panel F = Fourth Tuesday following 4th Monday

Federal regulations as well as AAHRP accreditation standards require that IRB members be evaluated annually. Our office will conduct evaluations biennially. At the end of every other fiscal year (starting 6/30/2026) the Office Administrator gathers (from ARROW IT) the quantitative data needed to complete HRP - 327. This information includes: member name, # of meetings attended/# of meetings eligible, number of protocols reviewed (primary & secondary) and number of consultations. Other information needed is member education and member continuing education. Once that information is collated and entered into worksheets, they are put into box folders by panel and a word document is created for each panel including that panel’s members.  Staff enters member feedback into those documents.  Feedback for 3 or 4 members at a time will also be acquired during Friday staff meetings. Panel administrators then organize the feedback into a concise narrative. When that is complete, the Panel chairs get the box link to review and comment. The evaluations are then sent out by the Office Administrator via the IRBReview email account.

The same process is followed for chairs except chair reviews occur every 3 years and use HRP - 326.