Tag: NORD/Info Ready Grant

Announcing the NORD/InfoReady Grant Awards 2024 Cycle – 2025 Application is Now Open!

The New Opportunities for Research Development (NORD) Committee is excited to announce the NORD/InfoReady Grant Cycle 2024 awardees, sponsored by InfoReady and NORDP.

Beth Jager, Executive Director of Sponsored Research at Claremont McKenna College; Nicole Wallens, Director of Sponsored Research Harvey Mudd College; and Dean Gerstein, Director of Sponsored Research at Pomona College were awarded $5,000 for the project, “Steps Toward PUI/ERI Presubmission Peer Review Networks (P3RNs).”

This project will explore the development of collaborative presubmission peer review networks across collectives of predominantly undergraduate institutions (PUIs) and other emerging research institutions (ERIs). Its goal is to use these expert proposal review networks to mitigate the difficulties sponsored research officers at relatively small and/or highly teaching-focused institutions face in securing a critical mass of subject experts as compared to large-scale institutions with substantial numbers of grant-active faculty in each major field. Based upon data gathered in a series of interviews, the project team will create a workbook of best practices for faculty-led peer-review processes at PUI/ERI institutions. That workbook will facilitate future piloting of PUI/ERI Presubmission Peer Review Networks (P3RNs) that can serve as models for spreading P3RNs to institutions across the country.

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The Arts & Humanities Grant Studio at the University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill, was awarded $4,950 for the project “Research Development in the Fine Arts & Humanities: A Mixed-Methods Study.”

This study will investigate the primary needs for Research Development in the Fine Arts & Humanities at UNC-Chapel Hill, which is a STEM-heavy R1 institution. As such, it faces a crisis familiar to other institutions: traditional funding sources for arts and humanities research in the U.S. are declining. There are multiple contributing factors, including a post-pandemic decline in longstanding foundation and fellowship support and a decrease in the median size of arts grants. This decline has sparked a national debate, and this project’s goal is to demonstrate how research development support can be a key factor in mitigating that crisis.

Led by Director Ashley Melzer and Postdoctoral Fellows Sara Katz, Boyie Kim, and Mariah Marsden, the team has designed the study to use a combination of quantitative surveys and qualitative interviews/focus groups with UNC-Chapel Hill faculty. This research is expected to investigate research development’s capacity to build a more robust, resilient, and interconnected funding ecosystem across the university, one that meaningfully includes arts and humanities research. Additionally, it is expected to demonstrate that research development professionals are uniquely positioned to address the issues faculty in these departments face. The data collected during the study will be accessible by other research development teams across institutions, as will external reports that contextualize UNC-Chapel Hill as a case study among other U.S. institutions, exploring broader recommendations for tackling funding challenges in fine arts and humanities research.

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Scott Merrill, Program Manager in the Office of Research Development at the Cleveland Clinic, was awarded $5,000 for the project “EARS: Evaluating Awareness of Resources and Services in a Research Development Office.”

The Cleveland Clinic’s Office of Research Development (ORD) is charged with ensuring that caregivers involved in the research process—including principal investigators, research administrators, and administrative support specialists—are aware of the resources and services the office offers. The challenge is that the clinic’s more than 80,000 caregivers and 5,700 physicians and scientists are located at multiple locations. Like other central research development offices, ORD continues to hear from investigators and research personnel that the office and its services had been unknown to them. The goal of this project is to help the office understand what contributes to the lack of awareness and what strategies may be effective in mitigating it. The research process will begin with a 15-question survey to evaluate current awareness. That data will then be analyzed to determine appropriate interventions and targeted approaches. The implementation of those interventions will be followed up with a re-launch of the survey. The resulting data and analysis should allow the team to assess usage of ORD services and resources as well as identify potential weaknesses. The expected outcome is that the percentage of increased awareness will match the percentage of increased resource utilization and increased traffic on the ORD intranet site.

InfoReady Corporation and NORDP’s New Opportunities in Research Development (NORD) Initiative has launched the 2025 cycle of the NORD | InfoReady Research Grants in Research Development.

This opportunity funds research projects that support the disciplinary field of Research Development. To develop a robust understanding of Research Development and its impacts (locally, nationally, and internationally), a wide range of projects will need to be undertaken. Some of these will be empirical studies (e.g., surveys, interview studies, case studies, reviews), but others must be theoretical, conceptual, and even purely descriptive or definitional. In many ways, the path to Research Development becoming a field must begin with research that helps the field define and standardize the terms used to identify skills and practices, as well as metrics that allow us to measure both activities and their outcomes for Research Development.

Awards are expected to be up to $5,000 for projects lasting up to 18 months; however, applicants are strongly encouraged to target 12-month projects. The anticipated project period for this award cycle is November 1, 2025, through April 30, 2027.


The NORD | InfoReady Research Grants in Research Development Program is open to all interested researchers, regardless of whether they are NORDP members. A list of research topics, including the program’s priority areas of interest, is presented in NORDP’s InfoReady instance.

The application deadline is 11:59 p.m. Eastern time on Tuesday, July 29, 2025.

The New Opportunities for Research Development (NORD) Committee is excited to announce the NORD / InfoReady Grant Cycle I 2023 Awardees, sponsored by InfoReady and NORDP

written by the NORD Committee

Meira Orentlicher from Touro University was awarded $4,950 for the project, “Understanding the Experiences and Needs of Immigrant Faculty Researchers in their Career Development.” 

Meira Orentlicher (Touro University)

Immigrants contribute to the growth and development of the US research enterprise at many levels, as faculty, staff, and learners. This project seeks to understand the experiences, perceptions, triumphs, and challenges of immigrant faculty working at US research institutions. Orentlicher and other members of NORDP’s Immigrant Knowledge and Wisdom affinity group (Melissa Li, University of Michigan; Gagan Bajaj, University of Vermont; Samarpita Sengupta, UT Southwestern Medical Center) will conduct in-depth interviews with first-generation immigrant faculty researchers. Using the results of those interviews, they will develop the foundation for tools and actionable strategies for research development professionals to use in supporting immigrant researchers.

Susan Carter (Santa Fe Institute) and Nathan Meier (University of Nebraska-Lincoln) were awarded $4,976 for the project “Professional Development in Research Development: A Landscape Analysis.”

Susan Carter (Santa Fe Institute)
Nathan Meier (University of Nebraska Lincoln)

There is no comprehensive, intentional system of professional development programming to support the research development (RD) workforce. This gap complicates the recruitment, development, and retention of talent in RD. This project seeks to establish a systematic understanding of professional development opportunities available to RD practitioners through an online survey. The survey will collect information about extant RD-focused professional development programming. Survey items also will capture respondents’ perceptions about barriers to access or participation in professional development programming in RD, help identify holes in that content, and surface promising approaches from allied fields. Results will provide a baseline against which unmet professional development needs of RD professionals can be identified and offer empirical direction for future attention and investment.

Charlene Emerson from the University of Missouri – Columbia was awarded $3,750 for the project “Responsibilities and Motivations of Research Support Staff: An Institutional Case Study.”

Charlene Emerson (University of Missouri)

As universities continue to invest in research development (RD), they will likely experience challenges integrating existing infrastructure with emerging RD practices, as well as with recruiting and retaining skilled research support staff. Emerson and team will use a survey-based approach to characterize RD and research administration (RA) task distribution at an R1 institution and identify variables that can be used to optimize research support operations. In addition to collecting data to understand the distribution of RD and RA responsibilities across positions and units, the team will also collect information on staff experiences, job satisfaction, and career motivations. The cross-disciplinary team includes human resources professionals, so that results can be used to inform institutional practices for structuring research support offices and for recruiting and retaining research support staff.

Congratulations to Meira, Susan, Nathan, and Charlene!

Announcing the NORD/InfoReady 2022 Cycle II Grant Awardees

The New Opportunities for Research Development (NORD) Committee is excited to announce the NORD / InfoReady Grant Cycle II 2022 Awardees, sponsored by InfoReady and NORDP.

NORD/InfoReady Grant Awardee Sanjukta Choudhury

Sanjukta Choudhury, from the University of Saskatchewan, was awarded $4,714.18 for the project, “Identifying Equity, Diversity, and Inclusion (EDI) Gaps in Faculty Research to Inform Research Development Practices: The Case of a Canadian Research-Intensive University” 

This project aims to advance Equity, Diversity, and Inclusion (EDI) in faculty research through identifying barriers that researchers face in academia for meaningful EDI integration in research, and by gathering inputs on possible actions to address those barriers. The proposal addresses a pressing question in the disciplinary field of Research Development (RD) and proposes a three-step plan: a) developing a better understanding of the details of the problem picture that our researchers are facing to generate and nurture an inclusive research environment, b) discussing/consulting the identified problems with RD professionals for possible solutions, and c) communicating the findings with the broader research community internationally. Choudhury anticipates that the findings will impact the perspectives and understanding of both the researchers and research administration leadership/ professionals, resulting in an expansion of the resource allocation and improved training / services around adopting a more inclusive research guidance and practices. The research will influence enhanced EDI skills for RD professionals and larger scale research and collaboration among RD professionals internationally, broadening the recognition that is necessary to sustain a deep and lasting change in RD.

NORD/InfoReady Grant Awardee Kathryn Duvall

Kathryn Duvall, from East Tennessee University, was awarded $5,000 for the project “Developing strategies to improve and facilitate collaborative research” 

Through a collaboration with an university institute and a regional committee on research and academics, Duvall’s project seeks to better understand the barriers, opportunities, and facilitators to fostering and enhancing interdisciplinary research around a central focus area (child and family health) with administrators, faculty, staff, trainees, and community organization representatives in a regional sample of south central Appalachian institutions for higher education. Duvall will develop a data dashboard around a central research focus (child and family health) within the region to provide information that will improve communication about work being conducted in the region, and foster collaborative teams which include more clinical faculty. 

NORD/InfoReady Grant Awardee, Pammala Petrucka

The Nursing Unit for Research & Scholarship Excellence (NURSE) led by Dr. Pammla Petrucka, from the University of Saskatchewan, was awarded $5,000 for the project “Exploring the role of research development in building a strong culture of research: Co-creating with researchers and research development professionals through participatory diagramming”

This study seeks to better understand how the professionals that support and strengthen the research process can build a positive research culture for faculty and institutions, and ultimately enhance research development as a profession. Petrucka and participants will create a research development cycle diagram to illustrate (i) how decentralized and targeted research development supports activities that can build research culture within the College of Nursing and beyond and (ii) identify lessons learned, best practices, tools, and resources to advance the profession within North America. The results of this study will provide insights into the role research development plays in creating a strong culture of research within an academic unit from the perspectives of researchers and research development professionals. By examining the beliefs, values, knowledge, and actions that build culture, research institutions will be better positioned to continue to create a permanent culture shift that builds an environment for research success.

Congratulations, Sanjukta, Kathryn, and Pammla!

Irvine and Roane awarded NORD/InfoReady Research Development Grant

Rebecca Irvine (top) and Alexus Roane (bottom), 2022 NORD/Info Ready RD Grant Awardees

NORDP is excited to announce that the 2022 Cycle 1 NORD / InfoReady Research Development grant program awardee is Rebecca Irvine from the Institute for Research on Women and Gender (IRWG) at the University of Michigan, who will be working with co-PI Alexus Roane. The project, Examining the Role of Research Development in Promoting Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion, aims to explore how research development professionals can help faculty integrate diversity, equity & inclusion (DEI) frameworks into research. The project seeks to identify the challenges and opportunities of this integration by gaining insight from both DEI and RD professionals, in an effort to provide information to improve efforts overall.

Irvine, the Program Director for Faculty Research Development at the IRWG, noted, “Many research development professionals feel ill-equipped to offer insight and suggestions on improving the DEI aspects of research proposals. Building stronger relationships between DEI and RD professionals and providing the right tools to facilitate these conversations may be a way to begin to bridge this divide.”

Roane, an IRWG Graduate Fellow for Research, added, “I look forward to challenging ourselves to expand the possibilities of how we can imagine the necessary integration of DEI frameworks into research development both in and beyond the U-M community!”

The findings of the study are expected to help inform future policy and practice through a series of practical recommendations, reports, and resources.

Congratulations Rebecca and Alexus! And thank you to InfoReady for sponsoring the NORD / InfoReady Research Development grant program.

Written by Karen Fletcher, New Opportunities for Research Development (NORD)

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.