the board's calendar
How long it takes, answered in gates and passes.
The honest answer to "how long does Herzing IRB approval take" is that nobody outside the board can tell you, and anybody who gives you a figure is guessing with your project. What can be described exactly is the shape of the journey: a set of gates, published in Herzing's own bylaws and forms, each of which opens on a condition rather than on a clock. Read this way the question becomes answerable — and, better, actionable, because one of the gates is entirely in your hands.
Annika Brandstetter, DNP, APRN · filed 23 August 2026
Nobody outside the board can tell you how long. What can be said precisely is the sequence: a submission deadline, a triage, a meeting, a written decision, and then any further pass your folder asks for. The only variable you control is how many passes.
Why won't anyone give you a number?
Because the number would be made of things nobody outside the board can see. A convened review needs a quorum, which Herzing's bylaws set at one more than half the membership, with a non-scientist among those present — and a meeting's agenda is not published to applicants beforehand. The Chair's triage of incoming applications happens before anyone knows what a file will be assigned to. And the queue ahead of you consists of other people's folders, whose completeness you cannot inspect.
There is a second reason, and it matters more. A figure invites a plan built around it, and a plan built around a guessed figure fails in exactly the way that hurts: the project starts collecting on the strength of an expected approval. Herzing's bylaws close that door explicitly for exempt work — research may not begin until written approval is granted — and the principle runs across every path. Data gathered before the written decision cannot be rescued by an approval that arrives afterwards.
So we do not forecast, and we would treat any consultant who does as a warning sign. What we do instead is described in the last tab of how it works: build the folder so that it asks the board for one pass.
What are the gates, in order?
Every one of these is published by Herzing or by the regulation the board works under. None of them is a duration. All of them are conditions, which is why a folder can be built to satisfy them.
| Gate | Who acts | What opens it | What you control |
|---|---|---|---|
| The right application | You | Herzing's Getting Started note assigns the form by programme — one for the doctoral nursing tracks it lists, the other for everybody else | All of it |
| The submission checklist | You | Every item on page one present: signatures, instruments, consent documents, the confidentiality description, CITI certification, any external board's application and approval letter, any program chair letter | All of it |
| The submission deadline | You, against the board's calendar | Applications reaching the Chair by the announced cut-off are considered at that meeting; those arriving after it wait for the next scheduled meeting | All of it |
| Triage | The IRB Chair | Every application that arrives is read by the Chair and sorted into one of three lanes: exemption, expedited handling, or the convened board | Only the clarity of your category argument |
| The reading | Chair, designee, or the convened board | Expedited review is carried out by the Chair or an experienced designee; full board review happens at a convened meeting with quorum | Nothing |
| The written decision | The board | Approval, required modifications, or disapproval — notified in writing, with reasons and a right to respond where a project is disapproved | Nothing |
| Each further pass | You, then the board again | A point-by-point response, with revised documents re-filed | How many of these there are |
| Institutional review after approval | University officials | Officials may add restrictions or disapprove — but may not approve what the board declined | Nothing |
Notice the shape. Three of the first three gates are entirely yours. Everything after triage is the board's, and the only lever you keep is the count of passes. That is the whole practice of preparing a file, compressed into one row of a table.
What actually adds a pass?
Very little of it is exotic. The additions come from the same small set of omissions, and each one sends the folder back around the calendar rather than back to a desk.
- A missing checklist item. Herzing's forms list what accompanies the application on the first page. An absent CITI certificate or an unsigned page is a complete file minus one sheet, and it is still not a complete file.
- A signature not yet obtained. The research protocol application requires a faculty sponsor's signature where the applicant is in a program, with that faculty member accepting responsibility as co-investigator; the improvement application carries lines for project faculty and the program chair. Signatures are collected from people with their own calendars.
- Documents that disagree with each other. A consent form describing one procedure and a guide describing another produces a request for clarification even when both are individually fine.
- A category asserted rather than argued. Claiming exemption without naming the subparagraph and showing its conditions are met invites the reviewer to work it out, and reviewers ask rather than assume.
- A site letter still in progress. This is the slowest pocket in almost every folder because it depends on a signatory who does not work for you — which is why we ask for it first. See the site permission letter piece.
- An external board's paperwork not yet in hand. Herzing's checklists ask for the external application and its approval letter where one applies. Which board moves first is worked through in the two-boards piece.
- A data-security answer without nouns. Both applications want a storage location, the protection around it, a retention period and a disposal method. Four blanks, four names.
- Changing more than was asked. A response that quietly improves an unrelated section gives the reviewer something new to read, and new reading is a new pass.
The inverse is the entire method. A folder in which every checklist line is present, every document quotes the same plan, and every category claim is argued in the board's own vocabulary is a folder that can be decided on its first reading. That is not a promise about the board's calendar. It is the only thing anyone can honestly promise at all.
Which gates are entirely yours?
Three, and they all sit before the board has seen anything.
- Choosing the right form and reading its checklist. The checklist is on page one of both Herzing applications and it is short. Working through it line by line, with the actual documents open, catches most of what would otherwise come back.
- Meeting the announced cut-off. Herzing's bylaws put the announcement of meeting dates, times and submission deadlines with the IRB Administrator, and the statement of principles is blunt about the consequence of arriving late: the file is considered at the next scheduled meeting. This is the one gate where being early is worth more than being polished, because polish can continue and the calendar cannot be argued with.
- Prerequisites with other people in them. CITI certification for everyone named — Herzing notes it is free for its affiliates through Canvas — signatures, the site letter, and any external board's decision. Every one of these depends on somebody else's availability, so each should be requested at the moment the project has a shape, not at the moment the application is otherwise ready.
What happens after approval — is that the end of the gates?
No, and planning as though it is produces the second-most common surprise in this process. Three things continue.
Institutional review sits after the board. Herzing's bylaws restate what 46.112 provides: once a board has approved, university officials may still take their own look, and may restrict or refuse — though nothing they do can approve what the board declined. Board approval is necessary, and not in every case sufficient.
Changes are a gate of their own. On the research protocol application, no addition or alteration may be put into effect until the board has approved it in writing. Minor changes to previously approved work can travel through the expedited procedure under 46.110(b)(1)(ii), which is why a tightly scoped amendment behaves quite differently from a redesign.
Oversight continues. The bylaws provide for continuing review of approved work and for periodic re-evaluation, at intervals suited to how much risk the project carries. The reporting obligation runs the other way as well: adverse consequences, unanticipated effects, or new information capable of shifting the risk assessment go to the Chair promptly, and the board then decides whether the protocol has to be modified.
For where each of these sits in the run of the file, the process step by step lays the whole sequence out, and the FAQ answers the short versions of the questions above.
What to do next
Open Herzing's IRB page and find the published meeting calendar and the announced cut-off, then count backwards through the things that need other people: the site signatory, the faculty signature, the certificates, any external board. Start with whichever of those has the least of your own work in it, because those are the ones that wait on somebody else.
Prefer to put the whole thing down? Our free application review reads the folder as it stands and names the pockets likely to send it round the calendar again. We then build every document and answer every reply until approval reaches you — and we will never tell you when that moment arrives, because nobody outside the board can. What you own throughout is the project itself; what the board owns is the ruling.
Sources
- Herzing University Institutional Review Board — the board's page, its forms, and its published meeting calendar.
- Herzing University IRB Bylaws (PDF) — triage by the Chair, stated meetings and announced deadlines, quorum and voting, review after approval, and continuing oversight.
- Herzing University IRB, Getting Started: Read this First (PDF) — which application, where it goes, and notification of the decision afterward.
- Herzing University IRB Statement of Principles (PDF) — the submission cut-off and what happens to applications that arrive after it.
- Herzing University IRB Research Protocol Application (PDF) — the submission checklist, signature requirements and the rule on changes.
- 45 CFR 46.109 — written notification of approval, required modifications or disapproval, and the right to respond.
- 45 CFR 46.110 — expedited review, minor changes, and the limit on what an expedited reviewer may do.
- 45 CFR 46.112 — institutional review after board approval.
Meeting calendars, cut-offs and named forms change between editions; verify every one against Herzing's current IRB handbook or portal. This practice is independent and not affiliated with Herzing University or its Institutional Review Board.
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