Month: September 2016

Who said July and August were slow months? An update from NORDP President Gretchen Kiser

by Gretchen Kiser

I had wanted to dedicate some substantive time to writing my first post to you all, my valued colleagues in research development, to say something prophetic and inspiring for my first blog post.  Alas, I must tell you, at the risk of revealing too much, that my “The first month or so” blog post has now become “Who said July and August were slow months?” blog post.  This is the life of a research development professional.

I hope you will forgive this delay, especially as I tell you that your Board has not been at all idle. Here’s some of the things we’ve been working on over July and part of August:

  • On-boarding Keith Osterhage, our new Executive Director, who is an enthusiastic advocate for our goals, and has already been diving right in to help with several important tasks!
  • Working with our event planners, Designing Events, and our Executive Director to vet and select our conference venue in the DC area for 2018. We’re close to making a decision.
  • Goal-setting and planning. Board member Terri Soelberg and her university Boise State University generously hosted our Board leadership meeting at the end of August. In preparing for this meeting, I had the privilege of speaking individually with each Board member and will just say that NORDP is well-served by a diverse set of insightful and dedicated professionals.  As a means of understanding the strengths of ourselves as a Board and how to best work with each other, we utilized the StrengthsFinder tool to assess our individual professional strengths.  Not surprisingly, collectively we have a lot of strength in the tool categories of Learner, Strategic, Relator, and Achiever.

We tackled quite a few topics in our 2 days in Boise and I look forward to working together to execute our ambitious strategies to: realize our academic RD research arm (aka NORD), enhance and expand our professional development offerings, including into leadership development (LDRD), drive new sources of revenue, further engage critical partners outside of NORDP, thus expanding our sphere of influence and bringing new and valuable resources to our membership, work to implement more effective communication methods, develop a framework for regional and other affinity groups within NORDP, and define ways to help increase diversity in research development.  Over the next couple of weeks, I’ll focus a set of communications on a few of the topics that we discussed at the leadership retreat and hope to then give you all a good understanding of the direction that we’d like to take NORDP this year.

Let me start with some of the changes that we’re planning for the Effective Practices and Professional Development (EPPD) Committee.  Three very important programs have been nurtured under the EPPD umbrella: Online Professional Development, Mentoring and Pre-Conference Workshops.  As we pivot to further expand our professional development resources, we are going to pull ‘professional development’ into its own committee.  The new Program Development Committee will be focused on online as well as other professional development resources, and now including Leadership Development in Research Development (LDRD) content as well. Kari Whittenberger-Keith and Ioannis Konstantinidis will be the Board co-chairs of this committee.  The newly stand-alone Mentoring Committee will continue the fantastic work they have been doing now with Karen Fletcher serving as the Board representative for that committee.  Finally, the Pre-Conference Workshop group (still led by Kari Whittenberger-Keith) will slide over to sit under the Conference Committee, headed this year by Michael Spires.

I’m so excited about working together to meet the challenges and potentials for NORDP over the next year –  setting-up NORDP for organizational success and providing our membership with valuable resources for career development and doing their jobs more effectively.

NORDP 2016 Conference Notes: Empowering women leaders in research through alternative pathways

This post is part of our NORDP 2016 Conference Reports. These reports capture the take-home points from a variety of sessions presented at the NORDP Annual Meeting in Orlando.

Empowering women leaders in research through alternative pathways

Presenters: Alicia Knoedler
Key points from the session:
  1. About 74 – 76% of NORDP members are women.
  2. Leadership Development in Research Development (LDRD) – The skills developed from RD activities qualify RD professionals for leadership roles within higher education institutions and/or within NORDP.
  3. As an RD professional, you are already following the 5 tenets of leadership as defined by Ron Heifetz (these are listed in the session’s Powerpoint presentation).
  4. To be successful in RD today, you must be entrepreneurial, creative, innovative, and not afraid to take risks.
  5. NORDP will work to identify the broad base of skills/ ideas/needs for LDRD. The question of how we, as a professional organization, can empower RD leaders was discussed.
What resources did you discover at this presentation?
“Dispatches from 20 North Wacker”
A white paper that outlines the concepts and missions of both NORD (New Opportunities for Research Development) and LDRD. (You must be a NORDP member to access this document.)
What else from this session should NORDP members know?
  • It’s not always the RD professional who gets the recognition; RD professionals often lead in the background – working with faculty leaders.
  • Potential next steps were discussed: NORDP could have leadership development cohorts within their LDRD programming. A NORDP curriculum for leadership development could be advanced. The organization could promote leadership development opportunities within the NORDP community – best practices – annotated experiences.

If you are interested in joining the discussion on LDRD, let Alicia know.

NORDP 2016 Conference Notes: Developing research capacity and grant readiness in investigators

This post is part of our NORDP 2016 Conference Reports. These reports capture the take-home points from a variety of sessions presented at the NORDP Annual Meeting in Orlando.

Session Scribe: Karen Fletcher

Developing Research Capacity and Grant Readiness in Investigators

Presenters: Marjorie Piechowski and Sarah Polasky

Key points from the session:

  1. Get yourself involved in Faculty Orientation.
  2. Find out how much managerial experience/personnel awareness (HR) your new researcher has – most do not have any; and then provide guidance.
  3. Provide templates on anything you can.
  4. Consider providing editorial assistance for publications.
  5. All recommendations depend on context.

What did you hear at this presentation that surprised you?

The suggestion to host a workshop for graduate students before they leave your institution to train the next generation of faculty (focus on managerial skills).

What resources did you discover at this presentation?

An Assessment Tool: PI Grant Readiness, worksheet/list. This is a self-assessment for PI’s on how much preparation they had already completed in order to be competitive for a grant; this could be used as a talking point with junior faculty. Contact presenters (sarah.polasky@asu.edu and piechow4@uwm.edu) for a copy.

What else from this session should NORDP members know?

  • Don’t scare faculty with too much information – consider providing them with no more than 5 funding opportunities that are due within the next 6 months.
  • Find out if your new researcher has a research plan with their mentor. Junior faculty usually know little about what grants have been awarded in their area – help them identify those.
  • Grant Readiness should include: 1) Strategic Planning for Research Funding; 2) Ability Assessment; 3) Mentoring Support (individual/internal or external), Departmental, Institutional; and 4) Logistics (lab space, how do you fill out a purchase order, etc).
  • After creating a Strategic Research Grant Plan for a faculty member, re-meet with them after a year to update the plan. Consider asking for a report from them.
  • Provide them project management support.