Yavapai College Provost and Vice President of Student Affairs Dr. Doug Berry announced that Yavapai College has received formal approval from the U.S. Department of Health & Human Services’ Office for Human Research Protections for its Institutional Review Board (IRB).

This approval authorizes Yavapai College to review and oversee research involving human subjects in accordance with federal regulations and ethical standards. Dr. Berry said that establishing an IRB marks an important step forward in strengthening Yavapai College's academic infrastructure and expanding opportunities for faculty scholarship, grant development, and student research engagement.

With this approval, Yavapai College joins institutions nationwide committed to ensuring that research involving human participants is conducted with integrity, transparency, and respect.

"I want to extend my appreciation to Dr. Nichole Guzzo, who helped bring this effort to fruition," said Dr. Berry. "Additional information regarding IRB procedures, training, and submission processes will be shared soon. This is more than a compliance achievement; it is an investment in our capacity to elevate the academic experience for our students."

According to Yavapai College’s Dr. Nichole Guzzo, one of the college’s department chairs and a Psychology Faculty member, it is important for an organization to have an IRB to protect human participants and to support research being conducted by staff, faculty, and students at the organization.

“I am in my 19th year teaching at Yavapai College and have seen many of us needing to rely on a different organization's IRB when conducting research,” Dr. Guzzo said. “Granted, it is more common for large research universities to have IRBs than a community college, but Yavapai College is not your typical community college. There are many great minds and driven individuals across Yavapai College that want to increase and better coordinate the research being done.

An IRB for an organization is a group of individuals who review research proposal submissions taking place at the college, Dr. Guzzo said. These submissions will come from staff, faculty, and students alike. There is a large roster of members that are listed on our IRB (see below), and each research submission will be reviewed by a handful of these members.

These members review submissions in accordance with the principles of the Belmont Report to ensure respect and protection of the intended human participants in the study. An IRB is integral in ensuring ethical and transparent research while meeting federal and legal requirements for research with human participants.

Dr. Berry recognized the need to increase the research atmosphere after noting that Yavapai College has highly talented individuals across the staff and faculty. Many of them have conducted independent research in the past under other organizations’ IRBs, but there is a strong interest in continuing our independent research at Yavapai College.

Further, there are Yavapai College students with tremendous motivation and skills that would like to pursue research studies with staff and faculty advisors. Dr. Guzzo said that having our own IRB is pivotal in continuing this desire to increase research endeavors at Yavapai College.

Dr. Berry asked those interested in increasing research at Yavapai College to join him in some meetings in the fall of 2025. Three groups emerged from discussions with different directives.

One group, led by Dr. Dana Kirkwood-Watts, Biology Faculty, was charged with putting together and organizing research proposal submissions and resources for student research.

Another group, led by Dr. Karen Palmer, English Faculty, was to organize research proposal submissions and resources for faculty and staff research.

“The third group, led by me, was charged with developing an Institutional Review Board for Yavapai College,” Dr. Guzzo said. This was less of a group-project activity, so I worked to organize this endeavor with the help of Dr. Berry.”

Dr. Guzzo began working on the application with the United States Department of Health and Human Services' Office for Human Research Protections over winter break. However, she was unable to finalize an application without at least five members on the roster to serve as reviewers of research submissions.

In January, Dr. Guzzo started to recruit some co-workers for this task. She said that she was amazed by how many people reached out to her to be a part of this effort. The official roster now contains Dr. Guzzo as the chair, 11 voting members, and 20 non-voting members, for a total of 32.

The members include both staff and faculty across various departments at Yavapai College. The entire project took about two months, with our application being considered for 12 of those days.

“Having our own IRB is a great step forward for research to increase at Yavapai College,” Dr. Guzzo said. “This allows us to ensure the highest quality of research being conducted and avoids our reliance on other organizations' IRBs. Having to rely on other IRBs can create a mismatch between the standards at Yavapai College and the outside organization and create delays in submission reviews. Yavapai College's new IRB will allow for internal review to uphold the standards at Yavapai College and streamline research being conducted by staff, faculty, and students.”