NORDP News

Written by: Roshni Singh, Career Stories team

Creating Her Own Path: The Right Time, The Right Place

When Jill Jividen, PhD, defended her dissertation just before the Great Recession, she never imagined that her career would lead her to the world of RD. Like many in RD, Jill didn’t plan her RD career but started as a research administrator, where she seized the opportunity to learn the fundamentals of grant solicitation, submissions, and compliance. Her strong background in writing and communication helped her advance quickly, opening doors to opportunities that would shape her career.

Jill Jividen is the Assistant Vice President for Research Development at the University of Michigan (U-M). Jill holds degrees in journalism, English, and American Literature from Michigan State University (BA), New York University (MA), and the University of South Carolina (PhD).

Jill joined U-M in 2010 as a research administrator in the U-M Medical School. Despite being ranked in the top five nationally, U-M largely lacked knowledge of or strategies for Research Development, including long-term planning for sustaining its high ranking, faculty skill-building to increase competitiveness, or cross-campus efforts to activate interdisciplinary collaboration.  In 2014, when RD was still “thin on the ground” at U-M, Jill landed her first RD position in a small institute. Connecting with a handful of U-M peers working in RD, Jill says, “turbocharged my interest in the field and helped me develop a vision for what RD could look like at U-M.” This was Jill’s “right time and right place” to build interest in RD, and she successfully lobbied to establish a central office in OVPR in 2019. Her early challenges, however, were convincing faculty across 19 schools and colleges to use central RD services and educating them on the value that RD could bring to their funding efforts. What began as a “solo show” in 2019 has since grown into a team of 15, where Jill oversees proposal development and editing services, the Bold Challenges program for large-scale interdisciplinary science, a new strategic intelligence team, and a new Faculty Honorifics Office. To directly support faculty members, the U-M Office of Research Development pairs funding with project management, logistics support, and research development expertise, as well as offers critical skill-building and training to build research capacity. In her leadership role, Jill’s mission is to help faculty achieve research success and support institutional research strategy, while continually identifying and addressing service gaps.

Jill credits a hospitality background outside of academia for shaping her customer service-driven leadership style. Before graduate school, she worked in fine dining in New York City, in restaurants where staff consistently provided an outstanding experience for customers and took pride in the caliber of their service. She brings that same philosophy to research development: “We need to present ourselves as helping faculty, anticipating their needs, and providing seamless service.”

Her leadership has also been strengthened by NORDP involvement; Jill served on the NORDP board from 2018-2023, including as an executive officer, and she was recognized in 2023 with the Holly Falk-Krzesinski Service Award, the highest honor NORDP bestows on members for outstanding service to the organization, profession, and peers. Currently co-chairing the NORDP Training & Education Working Group, Jill remains active with the organization and is the recipient of the 2025 NORDP Leadership Award. According to Jill, her involvement in NORDP by “learning to be more diplomatic and helping people reach consensus, has really helped me transition to a more effective leadership role at my own university.”

Jill is happy to answer any questions you have for her, so please feel free to contact her at jjgoff@umich.edu.

To listen to her full interview by the career stories/kindling team, please click on this link (you must log in as a NORDP member to access): https://nordp.org/store/viewproduct.aspx?id=24459276; Chapter 50: Jill Jividen

Written by: Roshni Singh, Career Stories team

Answering Calls to Answering RD Questions: Kate’s Path to Associate Director in RD

The July Career Stories featured Kate Duggan, MEd, Associate Director of Research Development in Northeastern University’s College of Social Sciences and Humanities. Kate holds a Bachelor of Arts in Geography and French and Francophone Studies from the University of Massachusetts Amherst and a Master of Education from Northeastern’s College of Professional Studies.

In her current role, Kate provides a wide range of support to researchers, from identifying funding opportunities and connecting faculty with grant resources to running internal funding programs and facilitating competitive research proposals. She has a special interest in data-informed research strategies and improving research development processes.

Kate’s journey wasn’t as easy as it sounds. In 2008, during the recession, when she was looking into study abroad adviser roles, something she enjoyed doing in college, she instead found her first post-college role in a call center. While not her dream job, it gave her valuable customer service skills and public speaking experience—tools she still relies on today when working with faculty.

However, she never gave up and eventually ended up in Brown University’s Med School dean’s office serving as an executive assistant. She later transitioned into graduate and postdoctoral affairs before joining Brown’s newly launched research development office in 2017 as an analyst, one of just a few early team members. In this role, Kate was responsible for gathering resources, supporting faculty, and running workshops—an experience that set the foundation for her future growth.

Quickly making her way up, in 2022, Kate was able to secure a new position, doing what she loves doing, that is, creating workshops, bringing in speakers, sending around funding announcements, meeting with faculty, and other “hardcore RD functions”, supporting about 300 faculty at different career stages across the college. Kate enjoys learning from these faculty at different career stages and especially in Social Sciences, where faculty are working on topics like juvenile justice, gentrification, and more. 

Despite Kate’s accomplishments, she is always looking for new opportunities, like helping others with their work where needed. Also, Kate enjoys taking new courses to enhance her career, such as a four-course series on AI applications, which she has already utilized to compare solicitations and pull out differences. While her passion for international education and federal relations grows as potential future areas for professional growth, she has found enjoyment in her RD role.

Kate is an active member of NORDP. She serves as a Northeast Region co-representative and contributes to the Member Services Committee, a two-time conference co-chair on the Conference Planning Committee, and is a founding member of the Creative Arts, Social Sciences, and Humanities (CASSH) Affinity Group.

Kate is happy to answer any questions you have for her, so please feel free to contact her at k.duggan@northeastern.edu or kadresdev@gmail.com

To listen to her full interview by the career/kindle team, please click on this link (you must log in as a NORDP member to access): https://nordp.org/store/viewproduct.aspx?id=24459276; Chapter 49: Kate Duggan

Written by: Roshni Singh, Career Stories team

Becoming Herself in Research Development: Katie Pelland 

Katie Pelland, Senior Research Program Officer for the University of Virginia (UVA) Brain Institute, did not set out for a career in research development. Instead, leveraging her bachelor’s degree in mathematics from Pomona College and a PhD from UVA Engineering, her path into RD was shaped more by curiosity and conversations than a clear plan.

The May Career stories featured Katie Pelland, whose current role at the UVA Brain Institute supports research development and team science activities for neuroscience researchers around the university.

While finishing her graduate work, Katie began conducting informational interviews with individuals in academic, non-faculty roles around the university. She connected with the then Director of Proposal Development, Becca Latimer, who was excited that Katie was excited about RD work and proposed an internship on the central RD team. That opportunity, which began with compiling NIH T32 data tables (!), transitioned into a full-time role jointly housed in the central RD and graduate & postdoctoral affairs offices.

During the COVID-19 pandemic, Katie relocated to Lincoln, Nebraska, and joined the University of Nebraska–Lincoln (UNL) Office of Proposal Development team, where she focused on proposal development and programming and honed her skills. However, Katie’s entire family is in Virginia and Maryland, so after a couple of years at UNL, she returned to Virginia in a new role as the primary RD person for the UVA Brain Institute. Founded in 2016, the UVA Brain Institute serves as the hub of interdisciplinary neuroscience at UVA and fosters collaborative research groups across 150–200 affiliated faculty.

When starting out, Katie knew little about RD but constantly took notes, looked things up, and asked questions of the team, which helped her figure out the work as she went along. Katie appreciates that RD work lets her use both sides of her brain, from organizing spreadsheets to getting creative with a proposal figure. What she values most, though, are the relationships with researchers, her current and former colleagues, and the RD community at UVA and through NORDP.

Katie joined NORDP within a month of landing her RD internship, and she started by subscribing to the sometimes-overwhelming listserv. Hoping to get involved, she jumped at an opportunity to volunteer on the Nominating Committee (NomCom). Since then, Katie has been an active member of NomCom and recently completed her two-year term as lead co-chair. She has also participated in the NORDP Mentoring Program as a mentor and mentee, the Conference Planning Committee, the Communications Working Group, and NORDP LEAD. At the 2024 NORDP conference, Katie was recognized with a NORDP Rising Star award.

Katie finds her NORDP volunteer work incredibly rewarding, but recognizes how easy it is to get excited about opportunities and become overcommitted. She encourages fellow members to be intentional about the commitments they take on and strive for activities that bring satisfaction, spark joy, or support professional growth.

Katie is happy to answer any questions, so please feel free to email her at catherinempelland@gmail.com.

To listen to her full interview with the Career Stories team, please click on this link (you must log in as a NORDP member to access): https://nordp.org/store/viewproduct.aspx?id=24459276; Chapter 47: Catherine (Katie) Pelland