Three consultants read every file. Each owns a part of the Aspen IRB process and signs the findings she writes — and nothing leaves the practice until each has read the others’ pages against her own.
In short. Aspen IRB files at this practice are read by three consultants: Miriam Kessler, DNP, APRN, who settles the determination and the plan; Charlotte Devereux, MSN, RN, who builds the consent, the instruments and the data-security plan; and Isabel Rourke, PhD, who drafts the site letters, prepares the submission and answers every reply from the board. Each signs the findings she writes. The practice is independent and unaffiliated with Aspen University; it has prepared 1,200+ Aspen files since 2015.
Miriam Kessler, DNP, APRN
Lead consultant · determinations and the plan
Miriam reads the design before she reads a single form. Quality improvement or research; not human subjects, exempt, expedited or full board — the category is a claim the file makes, and she settles the claim from what the project actually samples, generalizes and tests, then writes down why it holds. She has read Aspen files since 2015 and writes Finding 7, the category that argues with its design, before the board can.
Her second job is the plan. Every number, instrument name, site count and procedure the application will later quote has to exist somewhere first, fixed; otherwise the application paraphrases from memory, and paraphrase is the finding boards write most. Miriam is the one who asks the uncomfortable early question — is the sample twenty-eight or about thirty — so that nobody at the board has to.
When a file is clean, she is also the one who says so and stops. Doctorally prepared in nursing practice, with her own project behind her, she reads as a practitioner who has sat on the applicant’s side of the desk.
Charlotte Devereux, MSN, RN
Consent, instruments, data-security
Charlotte owns the documents a participant will actually hold. She builds the consent to its protocol version and walks every required element against Aspen’s current handbook — voluntariness, the right to withdraw without consequence, whom to contact, what happens to the data — checking presence of each, not paraphrase. A consent that drifts from its protocol tells the reviewer the file was never read as one document; hers never drifts, because she stamps the version last, after every other page is final.
Her data-security pages name the four things the board reads for — where the data lives, who can open it, when identifiers come off, when it is destroyed — in one plain sentence each. “The data will be kept secure” is the sentence she deletes most. She also attaches the instruments exactly as they will be administered, with permission to use them where a validated instrument needs one, and reads the recruitment set for the gap between the flyer in the file and the email that will actually be sent.
Master’s prepared in nursing with a clinical background on the units these projects run on, she reads the consent as the participant will: on a break, quickly, looking for the sentence that tells her she can say no.
Isabel Rourke, PhD
Site letters, submissions, board replies
Isabel starts with the one document written on someone else’s clock. She drafts the site permission letter for an authorized signature — naming the site, the activities, and what data leaves with whom — and sends it before anything else is touched, because no cure made later can start it retroactively. A warm letter of support that never mentions data is the finding she sees most, and the one she is most determined nobody should see twice.
She prepares the submission itself: every form completed, every attachment stamped and in the order the portal asks for, filed with you under your name as investigator of record. And when the board writes back, the reply is hers to draft — the response memo answering each item in the board’s own terms, the revised pages it points to, amendments, continuing review — item by item, until the file is clean and the board has decided.
Trained in research methods and research ethics, she has spent years on the correspondence side of review — reading what boards write back and why — and writes responses that answer rather than argue, because a response that argues with the board costs a second cycle.
How three people read one file
The board’s method is the cross-read: document against document. Ours is the same method, assigned.
First read
Each consultant reads the part of the file she owns against the document it answers to — Miriam the application against the plan and the category against the design; Charlotte the consent against the protocol and the data answers against the four questions; Isabel the letters against the data answers and the forms against the portal’s current requirements.
Second read
Each reads the other two’s pages once more, cold, for the gaps that only show between documents — the consent that promises destruction the data-security plan never mentions; the letter that names a unit the application does not.
The signature
Every finding in your report carries the name of the consultant who wrote it, with the evidence and the cure. If you disagree with a finding, you argue with a person, not a form letter — and sometimes the person agrees with you.
The desk
Questions sent through the contact page, the email address or the live chat reach the practice’s application desk, which passes them to whichever of the three owns the answer.
What the practice is, and is not
An independent consultation practice. We are not affiliated with, sponsored by or endorsed by Aspen University; we are not the board, we do not sit on it, and we have no influence over it beyond the quality of the file it reads. The board’s decisions are its own, every time.
We handle the entire Aspen IRB process end to end — the determination and plan, every document, the submission, every reply. We do not conduct the research: the project, its data and its findings are yours, and you remain the investigator of record. We have prepared 1,200+ Aspen IRB files since 2015, for MSN and DNP candidates and other professionals in Aspen programs, rated 4.8 / 5 by the professionals served — and files are read every week. Ten of their accounts are on the testimonials page.
Put your file in front of the three of them. The first read is free.
The report comes back signed, finding by finding. What happens after it — every cure, the filing, every reply — is yours to hand over or keep. How the whole process works.
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Noted. We will be in touch about the offer, and the free review is yours whenever the file is ready.