The desk: three consultants, one file

Every Capella IRB application that comes through the practice is read by a person who has prepared hundreds of them, and the same three hands carry it from the determination to the approval letter. This is who they are and how the work divides.

The desk is three consultants: Elise Marchetti, DNP, APRN, who settles the review path and maps the file; Harriet Crowley, PhD, who builds the consent forms, instruments and data-security plan; and Margaret Ostrowski, MSN, RN, who drafts the site permission letters, files the application and answers the board. Two more consultants staff the live chat. All hold master's-level or doctoral credentials and have read Capella files every week since the practice began taking them.

Elise MarchettiDNP, APRN

Lead IRB consultant. Determinations and the plan.

Elise reads every new project the way Capella's board will. Her first question is never "what is the study" but "what will the board read this as" — quality improvement or research, exempt or expedited, a single site or several, identifiers or none — because the costliest early mistake on the route is claiming the wrong path and waiting out a review pass to be re-routed. She settles the path, argues it the way the file will have to, and maps every document the file needs before a word is drafted.

She has carried Capella IRB applications from the first determination to the approval letter for as long as the practice has taken them, across DNP quality-improvement projects, MSN capstones and doctoral research, and she reads the free application reviews herself. When the determination instrument on the home page tells a visitor they can file alone, that is her reading, written down.

Harriet CrowleyPhD

Consent, instruments, data-security plans.

Harriet builds the documents the board reads most closely. The consent form, written to the reading level of the people who will sign it, every required element present, stamped to the protocol it belongs to. The instruments and interview guides, named the same way the stamped plan names them. The data-security plan that says where identifiers live, who holds the key, when the data are de-identified and when everything is destroyed — answered as a plan, not as a sentence.

When a return letter cites consent language or data handling, her revision response is the reply: each point quoted, what is now true stated, the document and version named, tracked and clean copies attached. She writes most of the articles on consent and revision responses on this site.

Margaret OstrowskiMSN, RN

Site permission letters, submissions, board correspondence.

Margaret owns the slowest document in the file and the last step on the route. She drafts the site permission letters on the organisation's behalf — letterhead, the authorised signatory, the data actually named — and follows up with the signatories until the letters are in hand, because a file that is otherwise complete stalls at the IRB gate waiting for them. When every piece is in, she files the application, or completes the filing with you where Capella's current portal requires it to come from your own account.

From then on the board's correspondence comes to her desk. Revisions, amendments and continuing-review notices are answered point by point, document by document, until the approval letter is in your hands.

How the desk works

One file, three hands, in sequence. Elise's determination and plan come first, because nothing else can be drafted until the path is settled. Harriet's documents are built against that plan. Margaret's letters are requested at the start — they take longest — and her submission waits until every other piece is version-matched. The file never leaves the desk between moves, and the consultant who read the return letter is the consultant who drafted the document it cites.

The free application review is read by the desk, not by a form. You say where the project stands and a consultant writes back with what the file needs, at the email you gave. If you bring the process to us from there, the package is quoted in writing and the same three consultants carry it. How the whole process runs, move by move, is written out on its own page.

The live chat

Two further consultants staff the chat on this site: Dana Whitlock, MSN, RN, at the application desk, and Priscilla Hart, DNP, APRN, senior IRB consultant. A question in the chat reaches a person who has read a Capella file that week; it does not reach a script. If the question is really a file, they will ask you to bring it to the free review, where it gets read properly.

Credentials, and what they do and do not mean

Every consultant on the desk holds a master's-level or doctoral credential in nursing or a related field, and each has prepared Capella IRB files for years. The practice has prepared 6,400+ Capella IRB application files since 2006 and carries an average rating of 4.9 out of 5 from the professionals it has served. None of that makes the desk part of Capella University, and none of it gives anyone here a say in the board's decision. We are independent consultants. Capella's IRB decides the review category and the outcome, and its decision is always its own.

What we will and will not do

We will settle the review path, build every document in the file, draft the site letters for signature, submit, and answer every reply from the board until approval.
We will tell you when you do not need us. Some files read as ready to file alone, and the free review says so.
We will not conduct your research, recruit your participants, collect your data or author your findings. The study stays yours.
We will not promise an outcome, a review category or a date. The board's decision is its own, and we never invent durations.