A new Navigate: Fundamentals course will pilot an innovative approach for training newcomers to research administration.
This course will be richly designed to include professional scenarios and problems for newcomers to solve, exposing them to the business challenges and skills required to successfully manage a research project.
more information
- Navigate professional development portal
- Email questions to RAtraining-ProjectTeam
@umich.edu
It will feature current topics and guest speakers to introduce them to research leadership from around campus. The eight full-day sessions will take place from October 2015 through March 2016.
The course is crafted to follow the workflow of the sponsored research project lifecycle: finding funding; develop winning proposals; routing and submitting in a manner that complies with U-M’s institutional, legal, and sponsor requirements; managing the project (weeks to decades); and closing out financial books — all while ensuring the project and U-M adhere to ethics and compliance standards.
The new Navigate: Fundamentals course is part of the Navigate program that responds to the needs elicited from a 2013 survey that was conducted by the research administration advisory council training subcommittee for mentoring research administrators and training newcomers to research administration.
The Office of Research and Sponsored Projects within the Office of Research, and Sponsored Programs within Finance partnered to respond to this and designed the overarching Navigate program.
“Successful research administrators need specialized knowledge of complex regulations, technical tools, processes and strategic project management to efficiently support research faculty,” says Amanda Coulter, training manager for ORSP and Sponsored Programs.
“At a time where research compliance is critical and funding is at stake, a ‘sink or swim’ approach for newcomers is simply not an option. The Navigate: Fundamentals course seeks to strategically and creatively fill that gap.”
