Who: Dr. Carly Cummings, Senior Director of Research and Faculty Development
Where: University of Idaho
Number of Years Working in RD: 12 years
Length of NORDP Membership: 7 years
Entering the field
After receiving her PhD, Carly decided that she didn’t want a career in research, but she really enjoyed teaching, so she took a faculty position at a primarily undergraduate institution in New England. She started a lab there and supervised undergraduate research; she was funded for this research from a variety of sources. After some years, she decided on a change of course, so she resigned from that position and moved to Washington, DC, to start working in science policy. During her over two years in DC, she was a Science and Technology Policy fellow at the National Academies and worked at the American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS) in the Research Competitiveness Program, where she coordinated peer review processes to inform science and technology investments from state agencies and other nations. Part of this work involved writing requests for proposals (RFPs), soliciting proposals, managing the proposal evaluation process and making funding recommendations. Here, she gained deep knowledge of the peer review process and how federal agencies work. Next, Carly was recruited to a dean’s office at the college level, at Mississippi State University for a mixed RA-RD role. Over five years later, she moved to Utah State University and founded the RD office for the College of Science, which she led for almost two years. From there, she went on to start another RD office, this time a central office, at her current institution, the University of Idaho. She notes that she’s worked in a variety of capacities, but a common thread is that she likes to start things from scratch!
Her research development work
In her current role, Carly is charged with growing the research portfolio for the University of Idaho, an R2 institution with R1 aspirations. The creation of her office was part of a strategic plan, which includes supporting faculty in their pursuit of extramural funding. Her office takes a 360-degree approach to meeting their mission and achieving those goals. The office provides standard proposal development services, but they also place high emphasis on faculty development. For example, she developed the Faculty Success Seminar Series that ran for three years, with up to 16 seminars per academic year. Now, she is overseeing the creation of a library of resources with recorded presentations and slide decks available through their webpage. Her office has a focus on early-career faculty and runs the Proposal Development Academy: What You Need to Know Before You Write for a cohort of ~12 faculty who have been nominated by their deans for this opportunity. The focus is not on proposal writing but on learning about the organization structure of funding agencies and acquiring the broad range of skills required for developing competitive proposals. Her office also manages limited submissions and supports leadership training for early- and mid-career faculty through partnership with AtKisson Training Group.
Carly notes that in order to grow the business enterprise, it takes people who are capable and willing to write competitive proposals and then eventually write bigger proposals, and so on. She emphasizes supporting the people they have and likens this to planting seedlings and taking good care of them so they can grow into trees. At University of Idaho, Carly’s office started out as a team of three, and now they are an office of seven. She’s had great support from research leaders on campus, and she feels honored to have been able to grow the office as she has. The value of an RD office is definitely recognized!
Carly’s history with NORDP
Carly joined NORDP about seven years ago when she moved into an exclusively RD role at Utah State University. She found it very refreshing to learn that there are other people who had the kind of jobs she did because, until then, she didn’t really appreciate that there were other people doing the same kind of work at a university, which made her feel isolated. Over the years, she’s seen the real value of NORDP come from conversations and connections with people that she wouldn’t have met otherwise, including people she can call on when she needs some assistance. In fact, knowing that she has support through the NORDP community played a part in Carly deciding to take on the challenge of starting a central RD office from scratch.
Carly has participated in every NORPD conference and presented a few times. She’s a regular conference volunteer; presenting and volunteering are priorities for her team, she sees that as how they give back. Carly was on the working group that helps reshape the Leadership Forum for a number of months, with the aim to make this leadership offering accessible to more individuals at varying stages of their career..
Her motivation to run for the NORDP Board
Carly was approached by a current board member to ask if she has considered running for the board, and at first she wasn’t sure what she could contribute! However, after that conversation, she changed her mind. The conversation prompted her to think back on her experiences with RD, reflecting that everyone has their own path. She realized that representing a smaller, rural institution gives her a valuable perspective that she wants to share with others. She wants to let people know that they can advocate for resources and shared approaches to communicating with leadership about metrics, including putting them in perspective. For example, she was able to grow her office in three years and used metrics that she set (and quickly met) to support that growth, helping make leadership comfortable with the investment. She acknowledges that most in RD are scrappy and able to do a lot with little but that growing staff can be a reasonable goal. She’s found growing her office immensely rewarding, feels fortunate to have had that opportunity, and hopes that this success can serve as encouragement to others to grow their offices or step into a director role. Carly also wants to represent the voice of those in EPSCoR and IDeA states, where she has a deep connection, not just through her work in Idaho but in Utah, Mississippi and Vermont, with an understanding of how difficult it is to capacity build.
What Carly is most excited about as a new NORDP Board member
Carly plans to advocate for having institutions partner to achieve shared goals, something she would like to promote for the NORDP regions. She’s in Region V, and she is working with her partners in Montana, Nebraska, Nevada, and Utah to develop ways to share knowledge and resources, especially in the development of programming as well as faculty collaborations. She believes that this approach is keeping within the collaborative, rather than competitive, spirit of NORDP. At a previous conference, she noted a poster from Region I that provided further inspiration on how well regional institutions can work together. The leadership Carly brings in capacity building and in growing RD within institutions will serve NORDP well!
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