What barriers to compliance do research administrators face at liberal arts colleges and predominantly undergraduate institutions? What solutions can be offered to overcome these challenges? All academic institutions that receive government funding must abide by the same federally imposed rules and regulations for financial assistance, whether for…

The writing retreat has been positioned as an effective response to the pressure to "publish or perish" in higher education. An academic writing retreat is a professional development event that allows scholars to immerse themselves in writing for publication and to receive on-site support for that writing. In 2012, the Office of Research…

Problem Statement: Early-career science, technology, engineering, and math (STEM) faculty members are often challenged when identifying authentic diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI) goals, objectives, and tasks for their research grant proposals. Advancing DEI has not been one person's job but rather the responsibility of a highly organized…

Diversity, equity, and inclusion are laudable objectives, but how do we move beyond a proclamation of value to the gritty work of critique, openness, and action? One practice in institutional improvement is to focus on what can be counted, but cultural changes are more difficult to see. Finding ways to observe and measure what is inherently…

The 2015 Calls to Action from the Truth and Reconciliation Commission of Canada (TRC) prompted universities to consider Indigenization. Subsequently, in recognition of the need for a prior step, decolonizing became the focus. At York University (Toronto, Canada), while faculty hiring policies and curriculum development addressed some aspects of…

Female faculty remain a minority in academic research and women are often perceived to lack the qualities needed to be successful scientists, which may contribute to discrimination and prejudice against female researchers. Research administrators play a pivotal role in the development of strategic, catalytic, and capacity-building activities…

Research universities and the federal government partner to foster societal, scientific, and technological advancements, but the federal research grant process is criticized for its procedural inefficiencies. Principal investigators and research administrators lament losing time to bureaucratic regulations, unwieldy processes, and burgeoning…

Among strategies that campus leaders and research administrators employ to spur interdisciplinary research in U.S. higher education, one of the costliest--and increasingly popular--is designated interdisciplinary research spaces and buildings. Yet while interdisciplinary research buildings, often focused on the sciences, stand as significant…

Higher education institutions are moving towards highlighting the importance of research. According to the Department of Higher Education and Training in South Africa, the status of higher education institutions will be determined by the extent to which they are engaged in research and research-related activities. Higher education institutions…

Many funding agencies require researchers to include a data management plan with their grant applications explaining how they intend to make the data generated from the research publicly accessible. University administration and campus service providers could potentially leverage the content of data management plans to facilitate compliance and…

Research productivity and research excellence are elements essential to the creation of a conducive research environment, in which research publications, research dissemination, and research utilization, are key in fostering the sustainability of higher education institutions. In this study, the current institutional policies, practices, and…

To initiate clinical research studies successfully and efficiently, it is critical to develop a strong, feasible, and well-written study protocol early in the start-up phase. The University of Minnesota's Clinical Research Support Center designed and implemented a structured Feasibility Review process in 2018 that addresses common start-up…

Research development in higher education is a service-delivery system. In any service field, when choosing appropriate services, practitioners should reach for 'evidence-based practices.' Limited empirical research has addressed the preferences of research faculty regarding research support services. In this project, we sought to provide research…

The contemporary complex settings under which research and innovation (R&I) activities are executed in academic institutions calls for the definition of suitable management and administration approaches. To this end, (1) the existing literature on the management of R&I projects in the academia is reviewed; (2) major specificities of…

Background: The content presents a conceptually powerful and attractive framework for understanding the proposal development process to capture the complexity of the steps that contribute to successful grant writing. Based on experiences from 15 years in research administration and using real-life examples, the author juxtaposes the diverse roles…