Category: Liaison Reports

Karen Eck, Ph.D. and Gretchen Kiser, Ph.D. presented an online workshop, Research Development: Contextual and Relational Approaches to Institutional Research Support, in early December 2021 to research management professionals in India as part of IRMI, or India Research Management Initiative, an initiative of the DBT/Wellcome Trust India Alliance for strengthening institutional support for research in India. Reflecting on the experience of delivering a workshop outside of typical work hours (2:00 AM PST in this case!), Kiser commented that “although engaging with international partners may involve odd hours, it is nonetheless interesting and exciting.”

The opportunity came about after Savita Ayyar, Ph.D., a consultant leading the IRMI initiative, attended a talk given by Eck, Kiser and Jacob Levin, Ph.D. during the International Network of Research Management Societies (INORMS) conference in Spring 2021. After the conference, Ayyar inquired after an interactive workshop offering for the recently formed IRMI network, who hosted their first conference in January 2021.

Research Administration (RA) is in its early stages in India and is growing with new careers in both research development (RD) and RA. Ayyar says, “India has tremendous opportunities for team science, and Research Development can play an important role in nurturing these large-scale collaborations.  The April 2021 INORMS workshop by NORDP colleagues provided excellent examples of how team science could be professionally facilitated and how to hire people and build local capacity for this purpose. This motivated me to connect with Dr Eck and Dr Kiser, to explore possibilities for a joint workshop for our colleagues in India. We kept in touch and it was wonderful to see the workshop taking place later in the year.”

At the virtual December IRMI workshop, a first of its kind for NORDP, over 40 people from a variety of Indian university, research and private sector settings participated. They explored a variety of RD roles through interactive simulations with small group discussions that highlighted RD contextual and relational approaches, skills, and activities employed in cross-campus and cross-sector partnerships. 

NORDP joined INORMS in July 2020 and is committed to engaging an international audience and partnering with sister organizations around the world to provide professional development opportunities to its 1000+ membership. International engagement is led by the Strategic Alliances Committee (SAC) through its International Working Group and NORDP Liaison program. If you are interested to learn more, please contact SAC co-chair, Karen Eck, at keck@odu.edu.

Dr. Savita Ayyar is currently leading Jaquaranda Tree, an independent consultancy service she founded in 2017 that is aimed at supporting organizations with their research management needs. Prior to this she built an RD office about eight years ago at the National Center for Biological Sciences (NCBS) in India. She describes the experience as a “once in a lifetime opportunity that was tremendously rewarding.”

Dr. Karen Eck is Assistant Vice President for Research at Old Dominion University (ODU) in Norfolk, Virginia. She holds a Ph.D. in Experimental Psychology and completed a post-doc in psycho- and neurolinguistics at the Université de Montréal in Québec, Canada. Eck served on the NORDP Board of Directors from 2015-2019, as President in 2018-2019, and currently co-leads the Strategic Alliances Committee and represents NORDP on the International Network of Research Management Societies (INORMS) Council. She was selected in 2020 as a PEERD Expert, consulting individually and in teams for colleges and universities seeking institutional assessment of research development programs, best practices and capacity building. In 2021, she was honored with a NORDP Fellow designation to recognize her sustained contributions to NORDP and the practice and field of research development.

Dr. Gretchen Kiser is the Executive Director of the Research Development Office (RDO) at University of California San Francisco (UCSF) and a long-time research development professional. She holds a Ph.D. in Molecular and Cellular Biology. Kiser has been a member of NORDP since 2012 and served on the NORDP Board of Directors from 2014 – 2018 and as its President from 2016 – 2017. She serves as co-chair of both NORDP’s Committee on Inclusive Excellence and Strategic Alliances Committee. She was honored in 2020 as a NORDP Fellow and in 2021 with NORDP’s Leadership Award, which recognizes exceptional leadership and/or a deep commitment to volunteerism in ways that advance the profession and field of research development.

NORDP currently has 67 international members and has recently become part of a new initiative, the

INORMS Sister Association Reciprocal Benefit Strategy (ISARBS).  This will allow participating members of the INORMS community of research management associations to benefit from discounted rates on certain events, publications and other products offered by other associations in the international INORMS community

If you are a member of a participating INORMS association outside of North America, NORDP is happy to offer you the member rate for our annual Conference registration.  Please visit https://www.nordp.org/overseas-partners for details on ISARBS and participation in NORDP’s conference April 24-28, 2022.

Compiled by Daniel Campbell & Sharon Pound from the Communications Working Group

The Hiroshima Statement on Essential Practice of Research Management and Administration was developed as part of the INORMS 2021 Congress, which was originally planned to be held in Hiroshima, Japan. On May 24, 2021, the INORMS Council convened a virtual meeting. During the meeting, Dr. Koetsu Yamazaki, Chair of RMAN-J, the Research Manager and Administrator Network in Japan and host of the international Congress, completed the Hiroshima Statement by signing the document.

The statement (see link here) highlights a set of five principles and responsibilities common to the collective memberships of INORMS member associations. Research Managers around the world face similar challenges and aspire to a common goal: to improve our local, national, and global research landscapes. INORMS Council hopes to promote interactions, sharing of best practices and joint activities between member societies to benefit the professional development of individual members worldwide.

Karen Eck, Assistant Vice President for Research at Old Dominion University and Co-chair of the Strategic Alliances Committee, is currently representing NORDP on the INORMS Council. Kim Patten, Assistant Vice President, Research Development at the University of Arizona, is representing NORDP on the INORMS Working Group.

RD professionals and corporate relations officers advance research when they work together

Companies need things from universities: graduates, access to facilities, access to intellectual capital. Universities need things from companies: jobs for graduates, help with commercialization, funding.

Universities’ corporate relations officers help connect companies with universities, but they may lack deep knowledge of the research landscape. They may not know about the promising postdoctoral fellow’s innovation to transform the field, the unique core facility to address a testing need, or the multidisciplinary team to work with on a large proposal. That’s why research development and corporate relations make a great team: their complementary expertise is a natural area for collaboration to strengthen the research enterprise.

This is where the relationship between NORDP and NACRO comes in.

NORDP’s Strategic Alliances Committee (SAC) has been engaging with NACRO for several years, exploring the natural synergies between these two university functions. NORDP’s volunteer liaison responsibility is shifting to Don Takehara, Associate Director for Research, College of Engineering Office of Research, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign.

With more than 500 members, NACRO provides professional development and best practices related to university-industry corporate relations. “As higher education plays an increasing role in economic development, and in light of the challenging fiscal environment in which many of our institutions operate, it is more important than ever for colleges and universities to create and maintain dynamic relationships with business and industry,” the NACRO website declares.

In support of his RD role, Takehara has been a member of NACRO for eight years, even before he joined NORDP. He recently agreed to take over the NACRO liaison responsibilities previously held by NORDP Board member Rachel Dresbeck, who is a co-chair of SAC.

The relationship between the two organizations began in ­2017, when Dresbeck and NORDP Board member Peggy Sundermeyer presented on research development at the NACRO conference in Seattle and met with the NACRO Board to explore how the two organizations could work together . 

“This partnership with NACRO fits well into SAC’s strategic priorities by strengthening our reciprocal relationships with sister organizations. We now have a memorandum of understanding between the two groups, providing benefits such as complementary registrations at conferences. Our work informs one another and provides a type of competitive intelligence for both groups,” Dresbeck says.

Serving as a SAC liaison has also benefitted Dresbeck’s own RD work, helping her institution initiate new relationships with local businesses, both large and small. She encourages NORDP members to take advantage of this partnership with NACRO, which can help them work more effectively with their own corporate and foundation development colleagues.

Takehara echoes the benefits of RD professionals engaging with NACRO and their own universities’ corporate and foundation staff. “It’s important for corporate relations and research development members of the two groups to learn how to work better together,” he says.

An example of joint activity includes presentations at the 2018 NORDP Conference in Arlington, where Dresbeck and Eileen Murphy, Kerry Morris (both NACRO and NORDP members), as well as NACRO member Brett Burns presented case studies on the value of working together.  Murphy and Morris have been instrumental in deepening this important relationship. The following year, NACRO’s Co-presidents, Megan Greenawalt from the University of Pittsburgh and Adam Johnson from the Michigan Technological University, led the Leadership Forum at the NORDP 2019 Annual Research Development Conference. And following that, NORDP’s 2019 Great Lakes Regional Meeting, chaired by Jill Jividen and Beth LaPensee, included three sessions about RD and corporate relations and was led by Takehara.  Sessions included center directors discussing how to engage industry partners on large-scale proposals, corporate executives explaining how to engage industry in research initiatives, and a corporate relations panel discussing their perspectives on RD.

Many resources on the NACRO website are significant to strong RD strategy. For example, Takehara served the NACRO Industry Perspectives Subcommittee for its “Research Report: “Industry Perspective on Academic Corporate Relations” that can be found here.

More information on NACRO and the NORDP Liaison program can be found on the SAC liaison page, including a NACRO “Profile” link with members-only information for NORDP members. For more information about serving as a NORDP Liaison, please contact Karen Eck,  who serves as SAC co-chair, along with Dresbeck, Gretchen Kiser, and Ann Maglia.

NORDP fosters a culture of inclusive excellence by actively promoting and supporting diversity, inclusion and equity in all its forms to expand our worldview, enrich our work, and elevate our profession.

Jeff Agnoli in Ohio State’s Research Development Office serves as a NORDP liaison to OCLC, a nonprofit global library cooperative providing shared technology services, research, and community programs. He recently shared an OCLC report, in which he and other RD interviewees participated.

Social Interoperability in Research Support: Cross-campus Partnerships and the University Research Enterprise, by Rebecca Bryant, Annette Dortmund, and Brian Lavoie, explores the social and structural norms that shape cross-campus collaboration and offers a conceptual model of key university stakeholders in research support. Information about their goals, interests, expertise, and the importance of cross-campus relationships was synthesized from interviews. The report describes the network of campus units involved in major categories of research support services and concludes with recommendations to establish and maintain successful cross-campus relationships. Download the free report at: https://oc.lc/social-interoperability.