Sometimes someone in an institution will get all distraught about the
expression Research Administrator. It is obvious to us that Research
Administrators do not administer research, but the term sometimes seems
like an oxymoron to people with an axe to grind.

Research administrators provide services, information, interpretation, and
personal and career counseling over a wide range of activities to other
concerned people (including students, faculty, other administrators,
agency program officers, auditors, the press, and politicians) in the
various interfaces between the institutional researcher and the rest of
the world. The reason we do not call ourselves Research Service,
Information, Interpretation, and Counselling Administrators is because the
term is decidedly awkward and would drastically change the names of our
two main professional organizations.

The reason we have Research Administrators is because researchers (and the
people they typically encounter) are often much too involved in their own
specialties to become adequate in (enough of) these interface areas to be
successful.  Persons in our profession must be competent or knowledgable
in accountancy, law, government, politics, and general interpersonal
relations, not to mention being able to intelligently discuss what
research is actually about over a range of disciplines, sometimes needing
to understand thoroughly several cognate disciplines and sometimes to
understand the research in layman's terms in over a hundred disciplines.

Jim

Mike McCallister wrote:

> This thing about research administration being about IP?  That
> completely misses the point (Sorry Charlie).  IP is a small tail
> wagging a big dog right now and is used so much the term has lost
> currency.  IP happens within research, sometimes.  It is almost
> serendipitous.  It certainly is not as big a deal as some want it to
> be, not yet.
>
> So what's RA?  What did you tell your Mom you do at work?  That's
> what it is.  It's what needs to be done for our researchers and
> faculty  to create new knowledge, solve problems, grow themselves,
> even save the world, maybe.  But most of all what we do is help those
> who can to do because what they do is, by and large, important to
> society.
>
> Spanky
>
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--
James R. Brett, Ph.D., Director,
Office of University Research
California State University, Long Beach
562-985-5314  562-985-8665 fax
http://www.csulb.edu/~research/

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 via our web site at http://www.hrinet.org (click on "Listserv Lists")
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