Mentoring – NORDP News

Mentoring Reflections: Sandra Arriaga and Julie Hawk

Written by: Mentoring Committee

Registration for the 2024-2025 Mentoring Program is currently open on Wisdom Share for all NORDP members to sign up as a mentor, a mentee, or both. New participants need to create an account on Wisdom Share. Returning participants should follow the instructions available online from the NORDP Mentoring Committee. Deadline to apply for the 2024-2025 mentoring program closes on Friday, May 17, 2024.

In this installment of the Mentoring Reflections, we caught up with mentee-mentor pair Sandra Arriaga (Mentee) and Julie Hawk (Mentor) from the 2023-2024 cohort of the Mentoring Program to share their experiences with NORDP.

Sandra Arriaga is a Research Development Specialist with the Stanford Research Development Office and has spent the entirety of her career working in higher education. After years of teaching college composition, running academic programs, and writing proposals on the side (with a brief stint living and working in Amman, Jordan), she transitioned to the field of research development full time. Sandra has a Master’s degree in English with a concentration in Teaching English to Speakers of Other Languages (TESOL) and brings a background in education, social science, and applied linguistics to her work supporting STEM faculty from across the university on their proposals. Outside of work, Sandra enjoys traveling and yoga, and is learning to play drums.

Julie Hawk obtained her PhD in English from Georgia State University in 2012 and spent the next few years teaching at Georgia Tech and then the University of West Georgia, where she discovered that she could translate the skills from her training to a Research Development context. Since 2016, she has been working with researchers on a variety of kinds and sizes of grants. She currently works at Emory University School of Medicine in the Department of Pediatrics, where she deals mostly with large biomedical grants. However, her experience in both an emerging research institution and at an engineering powerhouse provides a wide skillset and range of disciplinary directions for grant seeking.

Q1: What influenced you to apply to be a mentor and a mentee for the 2023-2024 NORDP Mentoring Program?

SA: I am relatively new to research development, having started my current position in 2021 after a few years writing and editing proposals outside of my previous full-time role. Initially, I prioritized getting to know my immediate colleagues, supervisor, and institution while taking advantage of the many resources that NORDP offers. Once I had solid footing in my current role, I felt ready to join the NORDP’s mentoring program because I had heard wonderful things about it from my co-workers.

JH: I have been doing Research Development for several years, and last year I had a wonderful experience as a mentee in this program. Not only did the mentoring relationship provide a touchstone for learning more, but it also showed me that I was more ready to be a mentor than I thought. So I decided to pay it forward and sign up as a mentor.

Q2: What is your favorite part about your relationship?

SA: Julie offers great perspective and is just plain fun to talk to. We have a lot in common and both of us have our cats make a guest appearance more often than not. Her thoughtful advice and observations always make me feel energized after our calls, no matter what is going on for me in work and life.

JH: Sandra and I have a lot in common, including our educational backgrounds and our past teaching experience. These commonalities allow for easy analogies when we are talking through various experiences in our work lives. Sometimes I forget that I’m officially her mentor, as I certainly get as much out of the mentoring relationship as a mentee is supposed to. It truly is a bidirectional exchange.

Q3: How has participation in the Mentoring Program helped broaden your horizons about Research Development in general and/or affected your daily work in particular?

SA: Because I’ve only held one “official” RD position so far, I can sometimes lose sight of the fact that so many of us experience the same kinds of challenges and that others have dealt with them before me. Julie brings an outside point of view from within a similar professional culture, adding a voice of reason and experience which helps me reflect more deliberately. Through talking with Julie, I also learned more about her experience as an NORDP Consultant and became more interested in that type of work.

JH: Both as a mentee last year and a mentor this year, I have learned so much about the varied ways to approach RD work as well as the similarities that underlie all those variations. Working in a department as the sole RD professional, a network of colleagues is something I must intentionally cultivate. Participating in the mentoring program is one very important way that I do that, and it is extremely valuable.

Q4: What surprised you about being a mentor or a mentee?

SA: How much I needed one! It was the right time for me, and I was fortunate to be matched with the right mentor. While I have many opportunities to engage in professional development and mentoring within my organization, there’s nothing like talking to someone who “gets it” but isn’t steeped in the exact same context. It was also very beneficial to work through the MESHH Network framework with someone. Talking with Julie helped me see mentors and opportunities to find mentors where I hadn’t seen them previously.

JH: Like many others, I occasionally suffer from Imposter Syndrome, so I think I was most surprised by the fact that I actually know a lot more about RD than I realized. I was also surprised that the mentoring matching system seems to work so well. Both last year and this year, it matched me very well indeed!

Q5: What made you decide to maintain a longer-term mentoring relationship and how has it impacted you?

SA: When I reflect on my career so far, one theme that emerges is that whenever I’ve had the opportunity to learn from a mentor, I have thrived. In a previous career (teaching), I also served as a mentor after I had accumulated enough experience, and both sides of the mentoring relationship have been so valuable. Through the mentoring relationship, I have been able to appreciate how much I’ve learned and refined my own internal compass. I find mentoring especially important because I work remotely. I can intentionally build the type of connections that non-remote employees might be able to create more serendipitously.

JH: I have always benefitted from longer term mentoring relationships, whether they were formal or informal arrangements. After experiencing a great deal of benefit as a mentee in the program last year, I knew that any fears I had about not having enough time to participate were unfounded. Like the adage that one should meditate for at least 10 minutes every day unless you’re too busy, in which case you should meditate for 30 minutes, the mentoring relationship serves as a reflective experience that re-energizes my everyday work life.

Q6: Any words of wisdom or encouragement for those wanting to apply next year? Any other thoughts you would like to share?

SA: If you’re worried about having enough time, consider the “return on investment.” The way you’ll feel refreshed and re-charged after talking with your mentor will likely make managing your time easier in other aspects of your work. And by all accounts, NORDP does an excellent job with matching people. You won’t regret it!

JH: If you’ve been in RD for a while but think you aren’t advanced enough to be a mentor, that’s probably Imposter Syndrome. On the other hand, you could always start by being a mentee. Regardless of which you do (or both!), you will absolutely benefit from it.

Hats Off to the 2024 NORDP Mentor Training Workshop Graduates!

Written by the Mentoring Committee

The NORDP Mentoring Committee’s Mentor Training Team held a mentor training workshop in January – March 2024. Nineteen NORDP members completed the 5-week workshop, covering the 9-module Entering Mentoring curriculum initially developed for research mentors and tailored by the NORDP Mentoring Committee for RD professionals in collaboration with the University of Wisconsin Center for Improvement of Mentored Experiences in Research (CIMER). Over 100 NORDP members have completed the Entering Mentoring Workshop and received certificates.

RD professionals explored key mentoring competencies that can benefit RD mentors and mentees that have been associated with improved career outcomes, employee engagement and retention, and more inclusive work environments. The workshop was facilitated by NORDP members Jan Abramson, Kristin Boman, Paula Carney, Rachel Goff-Albritton, Melissa Li, Kathy Partlow, and Samar Sengupta.
The NORDP Mentoring Committee is committed to equipping Research Development professionals for success by offering meaningful mentoring expertise, support, and resources. If you would like to be contacted when the next Mentor Training workshop series is scheduled, please email mentorprogram@nordp.org.

Congratulations to the following 2024 NORDP Mentor Training graduates!

Sowmya Anand	University of Illinois
Vinita Bharat	Stanford University
Sherri Burda	New York University
Cate Caldwell	Black Hills State University
Caitlin Charos	University of California, Santa Cruz
Kaylynn Coates	Cleveland Clinic
Mandy Davis	Texas A&M University, Texarkana
Palemon Gonzalez	Research Development Consultant, Mexico City
Stephanie Haddad	University of California, Santa Cruz
Angela Jordan	University of South Alabama
Keri Jupka	University of Missouri, St. Louis
Prapti Mody	UT Southwestern Medical Center
Kelly Anne Moore	Emory University
Hugo Moreno	Research Development Consultant, Mexico City
Aimee Oke	Colorado State University
Daniel Riechers	University of Massachusetts, Lowell
Branden Ritter	Ohio State University
Claudia Scholz	University of Virginia
Ruth Sosnoff	University of Kansas Medical Center
Carol Thornber	University of Rhode Island
Monica Vidal	Stanford University School of Medicine
Nancy Walker	University of Missouri, Columbia
Kathryn Wrench	Lawrence Technological University
Kartik Yadav	University of California Irvine

Table: list of 2024 NORDP Mentor Training graduates and their respective organizations.

Cultivating Significance: The Importance of Developing a Network of Mentors in Proposal Development

Contributors: Proposal Development Peer Mentoring Groups (PMG) Co-conveners — Sonya Craig, New York University, Grossman School of Medicine and Lindsay Ridpath, University of Arizona

The Proposal Development field is growing as proposals become more complex and as the competitiveness for obtaining research funding continues. Academic success is not achievable through the efforts of a solitary individual; the era of lone geniuses thriving in academia has passed, emphasizing the collaborative nature of contemporary academics that thrives on teamwork, be that with other investigators or with research development (RD) professionals.

To help RD professionals build a network of support, NORDP initiated the peer mentoring groups (PMGs) in 2019, out of what was then the Community of Practice Groups. As David Widmer stated for an earlier blog post about the PMGs: “We are never fully developed by a single mentor. If you think about your broader network, it’s clear that you are being mentored by multiple people.” Jan Abramson said PMGs developed “from a discussion about member needs, the importance of building a network of mentors, and making sure anyone who requests a mentor has one.” A driving factor in PMGs is NORDP members’ needs. Christina Howard, David Widmer, Jan Abramson, Kathy Partlow, Faye Farmer, Katie Shoaf, and other members of NORDP’s Mentoring Committee, are the brains behind the PMGs, orchestrating the programming that has proven to be a valuable resource for many. The Proposal Development PMG is one of six active groups.

Proposal development can be summarized as the process of advising, writing, editing, coordinating, and compiling grant applications. The RD specialist can have many roles within proposal development, including as an educator, a project manager, a writer/editor/illustrator, or an advisor and advocate. Many proposal development professionals give guidance on and coordinate writing of grant components (including budgets, letters of support, and research strategies), manage grants libraries and other institutional resources, and coordinate and manage peer or “Red Team” reviews.

The proposal/research development role has evolved over the last decade, leading to major growth in proposal development specialists in university settings. Now, innovations in generative Artificial Intelligence and graphic design have the potential to transform both proposal development and proposal evaluation, meaning that the roles of RD professionals are likely to change in the near future. Likewise, complex proposals and transformational initiatives, like ARPA-H, are transitioning grant writing from a solo experience to one requiring strategic planning from a group. Industry support in research is also increasing, as more government agencies are including industry participation in their proposals. Some examples of this are the National Science Foundation’s (NSF) Innovation Engines (NSF Engines) and Directorate for Technology, Innovation, and Partnerships (TIP) programs, and the US Economic Development Association’s (EDA) Regional Technology and Innovation Hubs (Tech Hubs). Companies like Amazon are increasingly offering research awards (Amazon Research Awards) to test solutions. Industry understands the value academic research brings and is increasingly interested in research collaborations rather than developing an internal R&D arm.

By connecting with colleagues at other universities through our Proposal Development PMG, members are able to stay abreast of how other institutions are negotiating these new developments as they arise. Our PMG has active members from all over the US, in the medical, engineering, social science, and humanities fields. Some members are in leadership roles within their institutions working in large RD offices, while on the other extreme, we have colleagues who are independent consultants who work from home. We both joined the PMG for different reasons: Sonya was working within an academic unit as the sole grant writer and wanted to grow her RD professional network; whereas Lindsay joined the PMG as a Foundation Relations professional with the goal of cultivating connections and gaining a comprehensive understanding of the research enterprise. Whatever your office size or job classification, if you have an interest in discussing proposal development best practices and challenges, we invite you to join us for an informal conversation the first Tuesday of every month at 1 pm ET. See this site within WisdomShare for more information, or direct any questions by emailing the Mentoring Committee at mentorprogram@nordp.org.

NORDP Career Navigator – Mentorship for Exploring Careers in RD

Written by: Kellie Gross, NORDP Career Navigator Program

For many, research development (RD) is a career that is discovered by chance, and with that discovery, questions abound: What jobs exist in RD? How do my existing experiences and skills apply to a job in RD? Is this field a good fit for me? The Career Navigator mentoring program was developed to help NORDP’s trainee members answer these questions and more. In this program, trainee members are paired with NORDP Career Navigators who share similar backgrounds and career paths of interest to the trainee. Through a mentee-driven relationship, trainees can learn more about the field of RD and find support for landing their first RD position.

To date, this program has supported 10 NORDP trainee members. Mentor Dr. Kathy Partlow, who has promoted and supported interdisciplinary research development since 2012, and mentee Dr. Sofia D’Ambrosio, who transitioned into RD from her PhD in Environmental and Natural Resource Sciences, participated in the program in 2020. Over several months, Kathy and Sofia met to discuss topics such as Kathy’s path to RD, how to navigate an RD job search, and how to translate academic research skills to an RD job. Sofia credits a piece of advice from Kathy – build relationships with your local RD office – with helping her to land her first RD position at Washington State University, her PhD institution. She is now a Research Development Specialist within the Office of Research Development at the University of Massachusetts Lowell.

Learn more as Sofia and Kathy reflect on their experiences with the Career Navigator Program:

What influenced you to join the Career Navigator program as a mentor or mentee?

Sofia: I first heard about the Career Navigator program through the NORDP listserv in 2020. I was a PhD student at the time and knew RD could be a potential career path for me after graduation. But I really wasn’t sure how to start with the job hunt as I approached the end of my degree. Where do I find RD job postings? What are typical RD positions I should be on the lookout for? And most importantly, how do you ‘spin’ your skills as an academic scientist towards an RD career?

The Career Navigator program seemed like an easy way to get advice from someone that had made the transition from PhD researcher to RD professional. As a busy PhD student, I was also drawn to the fact that the program offered an informal setting without too much time commitment or pressure.

Kathy: I’m passionate about mentoring and have experienced first-hand as a mentee and now as a mentor the impact mentoring can have on your professional and even personal growth. So many of us have stories about how we somewhat blindly stumbled into research development. I conducted informational interviews that were extremely helpful in supporting my transition to RD, but I think we can all look back and wish we had someone who was dedicated to shepherding us through the process. This is exactly what the Career Navigator program offers for NORDP trainee members who are aspiring RD professionals. I was excited for the opportunity to share my lessons learned and a-ha moments to make that transition easier for the next generation.

What was your favorite part about your mentoring relationship?

Sofia: Kathy made the transition from academic research to RD seem feasible. Prior to our mentoring relationship, I felt like all my research training had set me up for a postdoc, researcher, or faculty position after graduation – and not much else. Kathy opened my eyes to the possibility of leaving the bench for RD.

Kathy: When Sofia and I met, she was already making all the right moves for exploring RD as a career and gaining experience in writing, grantsmanship, and the RD101 course. She was extremely easy to mentor. I mostly reaffirmed that she was taking the right steps and shared my confidence which in turn built her confidence.

Sofia, you are now serving as a mentor in the Career Navigator program – what drew you to taking on this role?

Sofia: I wanted to help postdocs and PhDs understand that RD exists as a potential career path. I had no idea RD was a field until I happened to run into a NORDP member at a science communication conference during my PhD. And I had no idea I was actually qualified for positions within that field until I met mentors like Kathy showing me the path from academic research to RD! I wanted to show other academics that RD can be a brand-new way of contributing to the research ecosystem that they hadn’t thought of before.

What have you found most rewarding and most challenging about being a mentor?

Kathy: I always find the relationships formed to be the most rewarding aspect of mentoring. I learn just as much (and maybe even more) when I’m the mentor. The challenge can be overcoming common misconceptions (e.g., you need more experience, it takes too much time, etc.) that are not true and can prevent you from becoming a mentor. I found it very rewarding to share my experience and revisit what I learned when securing my first RD position. I’m amazed at the impact, as Sofia and I only met over the course of a few months. The Career Navigator program is very focused, where the mentees are graduate students or postdocs that are interested in pursuing a career in RD. If you took a similar career path, I highly encourage you to volunteer to be a mentor!

Any words of wisdom or encouragement to those who are considering a transition into an RD career?

Sofia: Don’t be afraid to cold contact RD professionals for an informational interview. Plenty of folks will never get back to you, but you’ll be surprised how many people say yes! Even just 10-15 minutes of someone’s time asking about their career path and any advice they have can be valuable. They may even connect you to another helpful resource or person that you would never know about otherwise.

Kathy: I think you can be intentional and thoughtful about your transition to RD. NORDP and its community are supportive and have resources to help, so seek them out and you can make those stories about stumbling into RD part of the past.