By Alicia Knoedler
Our last NORDP Blog entry featured the newest members of the NORDP Board of Directors. Within that entry, it was mentioned that Board members will be providing regular updates to the NORDP membership. Each Board member has the opportunity to feature some ideas, give updates on committee work, and encourage NORDP members to become involved in the great work of this organization.
NORDP provides a tremendous network of colleagues and a wealth of opportunities to develop professionally. In a later blog entry, I will be sharing some ideas regarding leadership development within the context of research development. But before I get there, I would like to ask you to think about a few topics – think about them in the context of your own position at your institution or organization, the environment at your institution or organization, and your career goals and aspirations.
I am going to start with my favorite topic – DATA! At the recent Board retreat, a few of our discussions were aided by past and current data, and we all agree on the importance of accurate data when it comes to the NORDP membership, the exchange of frequent and current information – for example from Liaison and Committee reports, and the possibility that data might open our eyes to new ideas, trends, and needs.
The Membership Metrics Subcommittee, for example, recently completed the 2015 NORDP Salary Survey (you need to be a NORDP member to be able to see this page). These are great data to have, and beyond the figures provided in the report, the Subcommittee produced a great summary of findings that could be very helpful to the membership.
Keeping track of membership information is an important task within the Membership Services Committee and they rely on accurate information collected with you sign up to become a member or renew your membership. As we near the end of September, 2015, we have just over 600 members. We average about 15 new memberships per month and approximately 40 members renew each month. We now have NORDP Regional Representatives across various regions who are organizing discussions, listservs, and meetings. These representatives rely on accurate membership data to determine who is in their region. When the regions became more well-defined, we modified the classification of “Regions” in the membership profile system. Currently, 64% of the NORDP membership has accurate Regional classifications as part of their profiles. We would really appreciate your help in updating this information as well as other information in your profiles, such as your Institution/Organization Type, Institutional Consortia Membership (if you don’t know, ask around), and your Annual Sponsored Research Awards. All of these categories are important for various analyses and in helping us to determine target groups and programming needs. Please take a moment to log in to the Member Center (go to Member Center and then select “My Profile”) and make sure your profile is up to date.
At the retreat, the NORDP Board also discussed positions for the Board that will be open for the next election. We will have a forthcoming update on that topic soon. We use the membership profile data to consider encouraging individuals from various regions, or institution sizes, or other demographic and institutional/organizational characteristics to consider running for election sot that the NORDP Board is representative of its membership and benefits from diverse perspectives and experiences.
I would like to end this update with a few questions that relate to my next blog update – Your institution/organization may have just one NORDP member or as many as 15 (University of Tennessee, Knoxville!) members. Would others at your institution/organization be interested in professional development offerings provided through NORDP? How many more? Could this include faculty? Associate Deans for Research? Department chairs/heads? Others? Fell free to add comments in answer to these questions but stay tuned for a future blog on the topic of reaching a broad audience through professional development.
NORDP News 