a returned application
The letter is a list of conditions, not a verdict.
An application that comes back has been read, and the board has set out in writing the conditions an approval waits on. Each sentence in that letter is a separate request with its own idea of what would satisfy it. Read the notes apart from one another, work out which kind each one is, and the folder that goes back closes every one of them.
Annika Brandstetter, DNP, APRN · filed 2026-08-23
Nothing has been refused. The board has listed what it needs. Separate the notes, settle any note about the project's category before touching a document, then close each remaining note in the place it was raised and refile the same project.
What has actually happened when the application comes back?
The board has read the folder and written down its conditions. Both of Herzing's published application forms describe the same ending to a first pass: the applicant is told in writing of the decision, or told that further information is needed before the project may commence. The federal rule behind that sentence is narrower than it sounds — a board notifies the applicant and the institution in writing of approval, of disapproval, or of the modifications required to secure approval, and a disapproval has to arrive with reasons attached and a chance to answer it in person or on paper (45 CFR 46.109(d)).
So the letter in front of you is one of three things, and the third is by far the most common. Approval closes the pass. Disapproval says so in the word itself and gives its grounds. Everything in between is a set of conditions: the board has told you what would make this project approvable, which is a different message from a judgement on the work. People read a return as a grade because it arrives after a wait. It is not a grade. It is a specification.
One structural detail is worth holding on to while you read. Under Herzing's published bylaws, the Chair reads incoming applications to decide whether each is exempt, eligible for expedited handling, or needs the convened board, and the bylaws reserve disapproval for the convened route — the expedited reviewer may exercise the board's other authorities but cannot disapprove. A note that arrives from a single reviewer is therefore a request for changes by construction. Verify the routing in Herzing's current IRB handbook or portal, since the arrangement is the board's own and editions shift.
What are the four kinds of note, and how do you tell them apart?
Almost every note in a return letter belongs to one of four families. The families matter because they cost different amounts of work: one is a phone call to a site, one is an afternoon of careful reading, and one can reach back into the design itself. Sort before you start, or you will spend the first day on the cheapest note and discover the expensive one last.
| Family | How it tends to read | What it is really asking | What closes it |
|---|---|---|---|
| A document absent | “Provide the signed permission from the site”; “attach the completion record”; “the questionnaire was not included” | An item on the board's own submission checklist was not in the envelope | The item itself, in the form the checklist names — signed, current, and belonging to a person the application names |
| Two papers disagreeing | “The consent describes recording; the application does not”; “reconcile the participant count” | The reviewer had to hold two of your papers side by side and could not tell which one is true | Deciding which is true, correcting every paper that says otherwise, and saying in the reply which fact now governs |
| A protection left thin | “Describe how privacy will be maintained”; “clarify that taking part is voluntary”; “storage is not specified” | An approval criterion has no fact under it that the board can point to | A named answer where the general one stood: a location, a list of people, a separation step, a disposal method |
| A category queried | “Explain why this is not human subjects research”; “the aim reads as generalisable” | The door you claimed does not match the design as written | Either the design's own honest reading, argued from the board's published distinctions, or a changed design that fits the claim |
The last family is the one to find first. Herzing's Statement of Principles sets out the three readings a project can take — research, evidence-based practice, quality improvement — and separates them by purpose, by how much of the literature the work leans on, and above all by whether the findings are meant to travel past the site. A note that questions the category is not asking for a paragraph. It is asking whether the rest of the folder is the right folder, and that is why it gets answered before anything else is rewritten.
Which note do you answer first?
Work in this order, whatever order the letter used.
- Any note about the category or the review path. Settle it before a document is touched. If the answer moves the project across the line, the application form itself may change — Herzing routes doctoral improvement and innovation work to one form and other protocols to another — and every document downstream inherits the change.
- Every note that names a missing document. These are slow because they depend on other people: a signature from the site, a completion record, a copy of an outside board's application and approval letter where one exists, a chair's letter where the project is affiliated elsewhere. Request them the day you read the letter.
- Every note about two papers disagreeing. Fix the fact once, then sweep every document that repeats it. The sweep is the work; the fix is a minute.
- Every note about a thin protection. These are answered by writing something specific enough to be checked, which is nearly always faster than arguing that the original wording was sufficient.
If the letter's numbering is ambiguous, number the notes yourself and say in the first line of your reply how you numbered them. A reviewer who can follow your numbering can confirm the list without reconstructing it. The mechanics of that reply — quoting, placing, stamping — are the whole subject of answering the board's revisions.
How do you know a note is genuinely closed?
Three tests, applied to each note in turn. They are unglamorous and they are the difference between one more pass and two.
- It was answered where it was raised. A note about an answer on the application is closed inside that answer, not only in a covering memo. A note about the consent is closed in the consent. A memo that explains a change no document contains leaves the reviewer exactly where they started.
- Every paper the answer touches was replaced. One fact usually lives in four places: the application, the consent, the recruitment text, and the instrument. Changing one and refiling the rest unchanged manufactures a fresh contradiction, which is the most common way a second pass gets spent.
- Nothing else moved quietly. Where you tightened something no note mentioned — and occasionally that is right — list it apart from the numbered answers and give the reason. Silent edits found in a comparison read as drift, and drift invites a closer look at everything else.
What if a note asks for something that does not exist yet?
Say so plainly, and say what does exist. A board can work with “the site's authorised signatory has the letter and it will be filed the moment it is signed”; it cannot work with a paraphrase written to look like a document. The same honesty applies to a note you disagree with: answer it once, give the reason the request would harm participants or the design, offer a protection that meets the concern by another route, and then let the board decide. It is the board's call, and pressing a settled point costs a pass that could have ended the file.
Two practical notes on filing the answer. Applications reach Herzing's board on the schedule its own IRB page publishes — a bimonthly calendar with a stated cut-off before each meeting — so a reply that is complete matters more than a reply that is quick, and the folder should never be split across two envelopes. And nothing in the project may start on the strength of a return letter: Herzing's bylaws state plainly that research may not begin until written approval has been granted. That includes the friendly early steps — a pilot of the survey, an introductory conversation with the unit — which cannot be added back later.
What to do next
Read the letter once for the category note, once for the missing documents, and once for everything else. Then build the reply as a single complete folder rather than a series of attachments. If you would rather hand the letter over, the free application review reads it and comes back with the four families sorted, the slow items identified and the order of work written out; how it works sets out what the desk carries from there. The project, the data and the findings remain yours throughout, and the board's judgement remains the board's.
Related reading: the application checklist for what belongs in the envelope before it is sealed, and the FAQ for the shorter answers.
Sources
- Herzing University Institutional Review Board — forms, meeting and deadline calendar, contact.
- Herzing University IRB, Getting Started — which application belongs to which project, and the checklist on its first page.
- Herzing University IRB Application for Research Protocol Approval — submission checklist and the written-notification sentence.
- Herzing University IRB Application for Improvement or Innovation Project Approval.
- Herzing University IRB Bylaws — triage by the Chair, expedited authority, and the rule that research may not begin before written approval.
- Herzing University IRB Statement of Principles — research, evidence-based practice and quality improvement compared.
- 45 CFR 46.109 (govinfo) — written notification of approval, disapproval, or required modifications.
- 45 CFR 46.110 (govinfo) — expedited procedure, and the limit on what an expedited reviewer may do.
Named forms, routes and calendars belong to Herzing and change between editions; verify each against Herzing's current IRB handbook or portal. This practice is independent and not affiliated with Herzing University.
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