Spanky,

 

I don’t think anyone could last as a research administrator without having a few bright moments along the way.  Over the past twenty years I have been fortunate to have had a number of these, and I have always known that what I was doing was “relevant” even if those I was helping didn’t know it at the time.  I think that a large part of establishing the relevance of research administration is communicating the “why” of our role to our “customers.”

 

The New Yorker (April 10^th 2006 issue) has a review of the book, “Why?” by Columbia University scholar Charles Tilly. Tilly argues that people rely on four different categories of reasons when they try to explain their thinking and actions: (1) conventions (generally accepted views), (2) stories (specific personal accounts of cause and effect), (3) codes (rules and regs), and (4) technical accounts (stories informed by specialized knowledge).  Tilly’s view is that each of these reason categories is equally valuable and plays a different role. Problems of communication (and I would also suggest “relevance”) arise when people base their discussion on reason categories that do not match and end up talking past each other.

 

For example:  a young PI comes to the sponsored project’s office with a “story” about how much work they put into their last proposal that was not funded and how they believe the reason that they didn’t get funded is that NSF doesn’t fund PI’s from undergraduate institutions.  As a research administrator you can respond with (1) a convention (no pain, no gain) or (2) with a story of your own about other researchers who had to try a few times before getting funded by NSF, or with (3) a rule or regulation (if you had submitted your proposal to us the required 10 days before the due date we could have helped you with it) or (4) you could provide a print out from NSF that shows the number of research projects funded at PUI’s in the faculty member’s field. 

 

All these responses are possible (I especially like #3), but citing a rules and regs reason doesn’t match up with the faculty member’s story approach.  According to Tilly, this will cause communication problems. I also think it will undermine the relevance of the research administrator’s role.. In this case I would probably “think” options #1 and #3, but “respond” with #2 and/or #4.  Would the faculty member send me flowers the next day? Doubtful!  However, I think he would know that at least I heard him and tried to respond. By demonstrating that I consider him “relevant” to my life and job, it is possible that he will begin to see me as “relevant” to his. After all, to use a convention, “What goes around, comes around.”

 

Pam

 

Wow, Eastern philosophy and Steely Dan all at once!

Thanks

SPanky

At 11:55 AM 4/11/2006, you wrote:

If you are not trying to sell something (the object of branding), then being relevant may be very distinct from making everyone aware of your relevance. I think you are violating the bodhisattva nature of the research administrator by asking for thanks, respect, and congratulations. And given that the relevance of much of the work of our faculties is probably not appreciated by us, and certainly not by the general public, I hope you don't engender less respect in your quest for more.

Critique the substance of a research proposal, force the edits, and impact the review. Or write a proposal, have the PI sign it, submit, and see the check arrive. That will make your relevance very apparent and very appreciated. But if one's VERY relevant work is restricted to budgets and compliance, I think we must spend our days, like those in so many many many jobs, valued and honored by a few but invisible to most.

Charlie



At 11:52 AM 4/11/2006, you wrote:

No, it's teh link:

Are Your Services Relevant or Just Expected?

By Dr. Michael “Spanky” McCallister
Director of Research & Sponsored Programs
University of Arkansas at Little Rock

I was talking to a colleague the other day about the whole branding fad. Branding is underfoot in higher education (almost as much as nanotechnology, but that’s another story). Increased competition for students and donor dollars has us looking for ways to stand out, be recognizable.

Anyway, he told me about some things he has read, including some work by Robert Sevier. I’m not going to act like I’ve read these books yet, -- I haven’t ­ but the concept he discussed really has me thinking.

The basic idea is this­in branding there are two components, relevance and awareness. When you are establishing a brand you are trying to get your clientele or constituents to understand that your product or service is relevant to their lives­it’s something they need. A brand means nothing if it doesn’t, well mean something to the potential buyer. As the kids say, it “represents,” literally.

Once your brand has relevance, then you can do things to keep people aware that your product is available. That’s what a lot of advertising is, a reminder, a prompt to go and buy some more, to link this relevant things to situations in your life and so forth. But if your brand, your public image has no relevance, any publicity you get won’t stick. It’s reminding people of something they don’t care about, something that is to them useless.

This concept is really powerful for teaching proposal development, but that’s not the aspect I want to discuss. I think research administration as a field, and as offices in institutions, has never established its relevance. We generally feel (admit it) undervalued because we have not figured out how to make ourselves sufficiently relevant. Of course people learn that we are relevant when we help them in a sticky situation, when they see that we have skills and are a valuable resource. But, in terms of our community at large, on any scale, we are seen as clerks, obstacles, just red tape. Clerks aren’t about real work, they just do things that are mundane and often frustrating­a department of motor vehicles comes to mind.

And since we exist only as helpers and teachers, this is pretty weird, isn’t it? This is a much more fundamental problem than “Can you explain to your Mamma what you do?” We’ve been struggling with this for about 50 years now and we talk to each other about professionalism when we need to need to talk about relevance­not self-righteous self defense, relevance. We talk about being a profession, but mostly that’s self-talk­we, our work, need to become as externally relevant as we are internally proud

So we try to inform folks, to make them aware of the research office. We do those old lame “services of our offices” presentations. Even we yawn at those. So what if we do things if the researchers don’t value them? Preaward is being eaten alive (OK, almost alive) by the web and society’s evolving self-service lifestyle. Postaward is rarely seen by anyone as helpful­ if it walks like a cop, talks like a cop, you know.

So to whom are we relevant? Some of the agency people think we are relevant. Most think we are provincials, but they understand our role, even if most of our conversation with them is about problem-solving on our end, which already puts us in a bad light. It’s important that they value us, but they are not responsible for our walk-in business. That business, the researchers, generally values us once we’ve pulled their chestnuts from the fire.

Within our institutions who sees us as relevant? Some of our bosses get it; they realize that useful work is being done in the research office. Other bosses see us as handy tools for taking care of details (which to me doesn’t say “profession” at all). Many see us as necessary evils, BB stackers and bureaucrats, functionaries.

We have a fundamental problem, one we can’t overcome by advocacy. Improving awareness doesn’t prove utility, it just shows activity. We count stuff, proposals out, awards in, numbers of people at our workshops, all kinds of stuff, all based on the work and initiative of others in one way or another. Do these things indicate our relevance or are we just making noise, hoping to get some attention?

How are we going to do this? Often we are hardly visible units at our institutions­we don’t get column inches in the paper, recruit students, score touchdowns. No one plans to become a research administrator­they stumble onto the work just as you and I did. (Are there other professions with only a back door?) On our campuses we only work with the researchers who have the talent and gumption to submit a proposal, an often small component of the institutional community. And that component, by its nature, is focused on their work and not staff senate or other posturing societies.

We might take our on advice that we give in our daily practice. We tell our novice researchers to ally with someone who is already known, form a collaborative. I think that’s what we need to do, too. We need to form some collaboratives.

With whom? The most relevant, of course-- the biggest societies in research and discovery­in science, the humanities, engineering, medicine, anyone and everyone. And our affiliate organizations­AAASCU, NCURA, NASULGC, AUTM, and regulators and sponsors, our universe. In your institution you’d look to factuly development, the teaching and learning center, and the major research units. And the key to these affiliations is that we do relevant things with them, the things our collaborators and researchers want and need from us and our profession. We have to bring something to the table and we have lots of stuff to share.

Our administrative role has always been as a crossroads for regulation, communication, management, faculty development, and many other fields. Could not extending the model of our work to our professional interactions serve to show our relevance to our customer and constituents? I have to sound fascist here, but wouldn’t we be stronger in collaboration than we are standing alone?

“So, smart guy,” you say, “How do we do this?” Probably in small steps, like programming together, publishing together, sharing trainers, hosting meetings where real issues of commonality are discussed. There’s no question that this will take a while, but are we moving fast? The most important thing is that we integrate with the research world at every opportunity. We need to escape our administrative silo, participate as relevant contributors to the process. If we want to be a profession, to be respected and relevant, we must believe we are and then show our world.

There is a saying in proposal training: The meek may inherit the world, but they won’t get funded. No matter how hard we work in the present mode, we aren’t going to attract any more attention. It is time for us as the profession to bump it up a notch, get in the game, go metaphor crazy, and through our actions prove our relevance.



At 10:03 AM 4/11/2006, you wrote:

Hi Spanky –
 
The article sounds interesting, but the link didn’t work for me. Is it me?
 
Deb Birgen, MBA, CRA
Grant & Contract Administrator                 University of Washington
Tel: 206.685.7163                          Office of Sponsored Programs
Fax: 206.685.1732                         1100 NE 45^th Street, Suite 300
Email: xxxxxx@u.washington.edu                          Seattle, WA 98105
 

 

From: Research Administration List [ mailto:xxxxxx@HRINET.ORG] On Behalf Of Mike McCallister
Sent: Tuesday, 11 Apr 2006 06:59 AM
To: xxxxxx@HRINET.ORG
Subject: [RESADM-L] Relevance
 
I put a little article in the SRA eNewsletter about relevance in research administration. The basic idea is that many of us do what we think is expected in our jobs, but we haven't made a lot of progress in making what we do relevant to our customers/clients/constituencies. Here's a link if you don't get the newsletter:
http://www.srainternational.org/sra03/template/enews/0406.cfm?id=943
(the typos aren't all mine, I promise)

If this interests you and you have an instance in your experience where you did improve your office's relevance with in your institution, would you share that with me? I'd like to follow that article with one that has some examples for people in the profession to consider.

Please answer directly to me-- I'd appreciate it a lot.

Thanks

Spanky

Mike McCallister, Ph.D.
Office of Research and Sponsored Programs      
University of Arkansas at Little Rock
2801 South University
Little Rock, AR 72204-1099

(o) 501-569-8474                 The work itself, the pleasure of finding a field
(c) 501-590-5609                  for my peculiar powers, is my highest reward.
(f) 501-371-7614                                   Sherlock Holmes in Arthur Conan Doyle's The Sign of Four
http://www.ualr.edu/orsp/
                                   "At its best, life is completely unpredictable."
                                                       Christopher Walken

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