Research Admin Job Families: Insights from Tufts and UTRGV

I think we should go ahead and get started first off I'd like to welcome everybody to our webinar about research Administration job families I'm Selena canel I'm the associate director for New Mexico epcore which is based out of the University of New Mexico here in Albuquerque just a few housekeeping items before we get started our webinar is scheduled to last an hour we do have the Q&A box enabled and we'd like to ask people to ask questions in Q&A our speakers are going to be monitoring that and answering questions as it make sense during the presentation and also uh addressing those at the end we will make the recording and slides available to anybody who's registered for the webinar and in addition we'll be post in them to the upcore website and the YouTube channel with that I'd like to turn it over to our project leader Hannah Torres to introduce herself and talk more about what what was the origin of this webinar thank you Selena and welcome everyone we're excited to have you here today to learn more about research job families this webinar is one of a three-part series following from our NSF granted conference that was held in February of 2024 we were fortunate to have Thomas Spencer as one of our speakers for that conference and so we're very excited to have him back today with his colleagues to share more with us the webinar that we hosted last week shared some of our outcomes from the conference and we welcome you to view that recording on the epcore website and next week we're going to have our final of this three-part webinar series which will be a collaborative session to get people to talk about some ideas that they have for supporting and enhancing research and Innovation across the Southwest so we have five folks from across the Southwest who will be pitching ideas that can be future projects or informal collaborations and we're just going to gather and talk about where those ideas might go together so again thank you very much for joining us we look forward to a wonderful discussion today and I will hand it back to Selena now to welcome our speakers thank you so much Hannah and Hannah if I could ask you to post in the chat the link to register for next week that would be awesome I will do that yeah well I'm so pleased to welcome our three speakers today we have Tom Thomas B Spencer who's the associate vice president for research operations at UT Rio Grand Valley welcome Christina K Chavez assistant vice president for human resources also at UT Rio Grand Valley we're glad to have you here and Zoya D Davis Hamilton the associate VI Vice Provost research administration at tus University with that I'm going to stop sharing and turn the screen over over to the team to present thank you no we practice this in Pre but I don't see the ability to share anymore one second hang on there it is got it okay looks great okay hey excellent everyone so thank you so much everyone for joining us today um the and for forgive me I lost my voice earlier this week so if I squeak or sound weird I'm I'm getting over a cold but um I think this is a topic that's near and dear to a lot of our hearts um you know Finding good employees uh the how and the why hiring for research Administration uh can be very difficult right now and so um we the three of us sat down together and decided that we would do a case study of the the differences and challenges and two approaches um between the two universities and so we wanted to share some of the things that we've learned with you today um and we'll go from there and and as uh Selena noted I am Thomas Spencer I am the associate vice president of research operations at at utrgv and I'll turn it over to my co-presenters thanks Thomas and I'm Zoya Davis Hamilton and um uh I'm not sure what information would be useful for you all to know about me but I um work at T University since uh 2008 and I have been in my role since 2017 good afternoon my name is Christina Chavez I'm the assistant vice president for human resources I've been supporting Thomas um on his research related hires and everything to make sure that he keeps the the uh wheel spinning and his team staffed so that's what we've been helping with you everyone so we we as we sat down to talk about this we said well job retention and why is it particularly important for research Administration um and so when you talk about research Administration and I think we're probably preaching to the choir on this call here the research Administration professionals are are necessary to maintain and support the re the increase of research capacity at at our organizations there is no research without research Administration and research Administration is an incredibly challenging job uh there's constant pressure of deadlines there's constant pressure of of rules and regulations and making sure that we're prepared for audits additionally there's an Ever evolving knowledge base to the changing policies so it is a difficult and challenging job itself and retention is important for retaining institutional knowledge and uh I'll tell a story uh my previous institution where I was at during Co um and we'll talk a little bit about Co and some of that then a second but during that time in about a period of a year a lot of us left that institution to go to other other opportunities and some of us did some back of the napkin uh math and we realized that over 200 years of institutional knowledge had left within the course of a year at my previous institution and that is that's significant I mean there's a lot of uh uh the how and the why uh instantly gone with that group of Staff that's leaving and so when you're dealing with that kind of of of when you're dealing with hiring people in that kind of environment it can be very difficult and and additionally for the people who remain uh understaffed offices lead to employee burnout it's a it's a big concern especially in research Administration Christin any comments on this one that you covered it very well um Thomas nothing from me okay so um whenever we see one of the job postings come in for anything research related um we already know that that we're up for a challenge because commonly our time to fill uh on average is between 45 to 50 days based on depends on the time of the year during around this time it's going to go up a little bit because of the holidays um but whenever we see anything coming in that's related to research Administration we already prepared to be looking at a three to six month search until we can get somebody through the door and placed so when you when you get drill down to research Administration um there are some internal and external factors that are driving a higher than average uh employee turnover rate um and again we sat down and talked about some of the things that were driving us at in our institutions and I imagine some people in the audience are feeling the same pressures um the media can't quite decide on whether or not it's called the Great resignation or the great reshuffle but I think that that's a a fair uh explanation either way a lot of people in and around the pandemic decided to move organizations um some of that driven by the work modality options that were no that were not previously on the table we also determined that that employees are often motivated by a positive work environment um wanting to feel like their work has a meaningful impact especially in research Administration aligns with personal values while allowing to maintain a healthy lifestyle outside of work is very very desirable um as the as the job market changes work life balance is more important and and often much more visible than it has been in Prior years and um we also discussed the what are the work that we do must also include a meaningful why for our employees and I think that's something that can often be lost especially when we're so deadline driven we forget the fact that we're serving research and research Administration there is a meaningful why behind the work we do additionally remote and hybrid options are are now on the table and they give opportunities for people to move without needing to move and and that's kind of a an interesting way of phrasing it but it's much easier to move institutions without necessarily having to move your house and uproot your life and your family and your children um additionally entry level employees often do not have long ten yearses anymore very rarely do does a person stay with an institution for 10 years 15 years 20 years like they have in the past um in our in our exploration and we found that on average it seems to be about two years and they're frequently looking for the next thing the mind that we've seen for employees these days are employees are wanting to move up or move out and that's kind of where we found of in in the we in the realm of research Administration some of the concerns or challenges and opportunities for job retention at the moment I'm gonna leave it for Christina zo if there's anything I missed I think okay that's what we're facing two years okay first poll question so I I think Hannah you're going to be driving the poll right so at this point do you or does your staff have a clear understanding of um the career paths available in research Administration so options are either yes um it is clear what skills and experiences are needed to Pro progress um second one occasionally there is a feeling of being stuck or uh no there is not a clear path to uh progress so if you can go ahead and um make your choice and then once we see um and overall um any employee should be understanding how they can progress to the the next level in in their career if that is not something clear to you I would go ahead um check your HR website check if there's a pay plan check if their job descriptions available um or or you know seek a discussion with your supervisor because this is not something that should only be discussed on an annual basis when you're getting your evaluation this is some something your your career planning for yourself should really be happening on a regular basis it's not just something that you know we'll have a half an hour discussion once a year and then everybody goes back to to their computer and and keeps on keeps on writing grants keeps on supporting faculty but um this is something that you really should be um working on on a on a continuous basis see where you want to go and and then determine how to get there so um at this point I think has everybody voted drum roll okay so now there's not a clear path to progress so so that would be the audience where I would recommend go talk to um your supervisor talk to your HR office if you don't have that clear uh communication with your supervisor um but I would always recommend talk to your supervisor because that way you can talk to the person that has been there that that can set the expectations for you and um just look at where do I want to be in two years where do I want to be in 5 years and um see how you want to get there and then start um getting your plan ready there thank you okay um job family overall what we're seeing is that institutions of higher education have different job families so that's basically how jobs are organized um if you look at the job family it's actually a broad group so we've got for example our accountants we've got our trades we've got our human resources titles and uh these are jobs that are closely related in skill set nature of work and uh in the job functions then within the job family you actually have um a job structure so the structure would be your accountant one two 3 or your research coordinator senior research coordinators um so and depending on where you are um it can be very narrowly defined for example we've got an accountant 1 two 3 4 and very specific skill sets very specific um requirements from how to move from a one to a two uh you may be in a union environment where you have very clear uh step plan once you reach a certain year of experience you move up to the next level level um or it can be very informal that it's very broad you've got one job title of accountant and um or a grant research coordinator and um those are the that's the job that everybody kind of Falls in and then for each posting this may be a little bit more customized or during the interview process the expectations may be set but overall it can be very Broad and um if you're in that situation where it's very broad it really helps to talk to your supervisor to say what are the specific expectations set in me and um Zoya is going to talk specifically about the expectations for research Administration thanks Christina and of course research Administration is what is near and dear to my heart so I don't have such a big view as Christina does overall for uh HR related matters but for research Administration uh because uh of this expectation that people uh would be growing in their profession that is more acute because there is such a demand for research Administration I think career progression is incredibly important uh to us and then uh of course it's not enough to just have based knowledge uh it's necessary to develop your knowledge constantly and align your skills with the new demands and requirements and so uh the uh job family becomes more important uh than ever for us because we don't want to just come up with the job titles uh anytime that we feel that somebody is ready to get additional recognition um so if we can advance to the next slide please I think and don't we have another poll yes so at this point um if you think about your own institution do you have a formalized approach um do you have a formal job family and clearly defined career Lads um so we've got the yes no and unsure and and frankly neither approach is right or wrong it just really depends on the size of institution that you're in if if you're in a smaller size institution um you are going to be more of a jack of all trades you are going to be taking on more variety of Duties um in a larger institution you're likely more specialized um and it may have an impact about how easy how easy it is to to move into a different role because if you've been doing exactly the same thing and that's what you're comfortable with and trained with then um it could be that you're just very very specialized and then taking on additional duties uh maybe something that um is going a little bit outside of your comfort zone um so if we can I guess close the vot okay so the majority seem to have um well actually we're at exactly 50/50 so yes we have either we have a formal approach and then then 33% are not sure um I'm sorry 33% saying it is not a clearly defined uh job family or career ladder and then 177% are not sure so um as I said there's no right or wrong approach to have this clearly defined it really depends specifically on your institution if you don't have something and you are in a leadership position and want to have this more formalized I would recommend uh go knock on the door of your H office and say hey um how can we at Le how can we either set it up or communicate what we have already set because your HR office may think that you have the career families and and the job lad so and um there may just be a disconnect about um this not being clearly communicated thank you uh all right uh I will uh walk you through t journey to set up research Administration job families but first I wanted to tell you a little bit about t University for those of you who may not know uh T is a private midsized university and we were founded in uh 1852 uh and uh uh we uh reported about close to 250 million in research expenditures for fiscal year 23 we expecting a a larger number for fiscal 24 so our preliminary number is uh uh over 278 million um and uh we are a member of Association of American universities and we are classified as an institution with very high research activity uh just geographically uh we have four campuses in the Greater Boston area in Massachusetts and we have a variety of different schools uh which are um Medical Dental Veterinary nutrition uh Arts and Sciences engineering school of Fine Arts law and diplomacy uh College of Civic life so as you can see it it spends uh a large variety of different disciplines uh so this is one of the characteristics that TS we are very uh diverse in that sense and uh for research Administration specifically we have uh almost a 100 people in research Administration jobs and that includes people in the Departments and schools and uh at the uh Central level and we have sort of three uh groups of research administrators so we have pre-award um uh that reports to the vice provest for research uh we have post award that reports to finance and we have uh Matrix reporting for the school-based research administrators uh if we can go forward please uh so uh our research Administration job family is not new we first created it in 2015 when we uh established clearly defined role for research administrator but then in 2019 we uh took it to the next level so to speak and I'll tell you uh about it in a minute but uh just to describe what uh the job family is we have uh one hourly title which is research Administration coordinator and the rest of the positions are exempt and they go through levels one two and three and three uh is called senior research administrator because we think it is a more more um adequate title and then we have two supervisory positions of research Administration associate director and research Administration director and so uh none of the other positions have manager duties uh next slide please and so how did we get here so we used uh a framework um developed by corn well it's called corn faery leadership architect and its trademarked uh framework and uh as essentially uh the framework itself has 38 core competencies uh to select from and uh they are grouped into several factors and so just to give you an idea so a competency might be for example ability to collaborate or customer focus or managing complexity those are competencies and then the factors under which this would be grouped is uh self people results and so on and so um when when we uh uh delineated the job family the first step to do we gathered in focus groups led by HR and we uh worked with uh the cards that come with this this framework to designate a weighted score for each competency it was a it's was a whole day uh Adventure so to speak and um it was informed by the values and vision of the organization for this particular profession so it wasn't uh what what we have chose for tus may not be what other institutions might choose for research Administration necessarily so we chose we narrowed it down we chose um a limited number of competencies because as we know not everybody is excellent in everything or should be expected to be excellent in all areas and then uh from those competencies HR uh has developed for us uh job profiles uh job descriptions uh strategies for recruitment and talent sourcing and uh uh some scenarios for uh interview questions and then uh following that um HR has uh developed pay ranges for the positions within the research Administration job family and I know that here on the slide it says updated pay ranges but it's a continuous process it's not possible to update those ones and forever have your pay ranges as we know those things change and evolve so it's a continuous process process of working with HR whenever appropriate at some periodic intervals to look at those pay ranges and update them um next slide please so I'm going to first uh tell you about the benefits and then of course after benefits uh I'll have to cover challenges but first uh the benefits the obvious benefits is that now that we have standard job descriptions we can very quickly post new positions because job descriptions don't need to be reviewed uh again each time um there is already a text uh that goes on the website for each uh level of the job uh we have uh some AIDS uh such as an interview worksheet questions uh those are not required uh for managers to use but they are helpful we already have those competencies highlighted uh we have uh some improvement in career Mobility uh and retention because staff throughout the university can move uh to positions whether at the next level of seniority or laterally and it's known and clear which positions are next level of seniority and which ones at the same level and uh that can happen outside of their units and the titles are the same uh and then uh it helps us manage and I feel like this particular area we haven't fully uh utilized yet because of the limitations of our systems but we are working towards and and in some systems we already do that the positions with the same title have have uh the same permissions and this is based on the job code so when the person is hired uh and the the position has a job code it's already known which systems then uh they can have permissions so the only thing that we can then establish is based on these permissions which uh Department IDs or which account codes uh will be falling uh into these permissions but we don't have to decide do they have you permission do they have submit permission do they have approved permission those are already automatically established and we hope to improve uh when we get a new University enterprise system even further uh in this direction uh we uh have more effective identification of training needs and we have a university ran training program for research Administration uh that is ran out of my office and we easily know how many staff are at each level and develop our training and credentialing system accordingly and generally we find that it's helpful to have of responsibilities for different levels within the job family it gives us the same terminology vocabulary to talk about this was the staff uh consistency of expectations across units and centrally as well so those are the benefits and now we can uh move to the challenges I think so uh challenges of course uh there is no uh uh thing in the world that doesn't have challenges I feel like uh so uh one of the big challenges is and I'm going to to jump around the slide a little bit is cost because uh uh the establishment of the pay ranges doesn't mean that uh there is a fixed number pay range is just that you have a minimum you have a midpoint and you have a maximum and so each area can determine and for each staff member and for their area in general where in the pay range the person's going to fall and so it becomes challenging then to uh to have equity and parity of compensation for similar uh similar duties because those things are also predicated on the budgets of the schools and in the at toughs we use a budget model that um allows each school to manage their own budget and so depending on their budget we can have um differential in in the um salaries of people in the same job title um so um so that's one uh consideration and then the other challenge is that sometimes uh we receive a push back uh most often for two different things one is to give a senior research administrator management duties uh which is not part of our job family and uh uh when we you know learn um what true reasons are most of the time we find that this person is either ready for a promotion or there's and they the school just doesn't have uh uh funds to promote that them or they they have a manager with too many direct reports and they're trying to remediate that so but the but um we we try to hold our um position on this and then occasionally uh we have a push back to create uh positions uh more positions uh with the word director in them for example assistant director or senior associate director or or things like our senior director things like that um but when we were creating our job family we really really tried hard to uh determine do we need more levels and we just could not see a difference between these levels uh that we could document uh by competencies so we we don't have those levels uh and I think we have a Paul right after this right Christina turning this over to you yes we do so the question would be would you prefer a system with more levels of seniority or fewer or um with fewer clearly defined ones so just two options here more levels of incremental growth or fewer levels with a clear distinction between the roles so um again this is one of those questions where there's no right or wrong answer it is just what is appropriate for your current situation and um so this is something um where your situation may also change um as you approach to research changes if if your institution says you know what we we're going to really grow our research Enterprise um they may end up saying we we need more levels or uh we need to be more flexible so let's have fewer levels this is really just uh dependent on the on the approach that the institution sees works best for them and I'm noticing a question in the chat um about uh research development roles and I just want to say that when we did this exercise we did create a job family for research development as well as well at that time so we we do have that job family but it's it's a smaller uh unit so it's not as populous as research Administration by all means but we do have an advantage of of that job family too and I from our side as well I'll note that we do have distinct job titles under we call it research enhancement to not research development we also have a unique role under research enhancement as well okay and the poll has finished and um basically the majority of participants would like more levels for incremental growth great thank you for the feedback yeah forgive me I'm coughing again um but I wanted to give a little bit of background on the on utrgv and a little bit of um Zoya gave a little bit of history on tough I'll give a little bit of history on utrgv um we are a newer institution with rapidly growing research expenditures we were created by the Texas legislator in 2013 and we were actually founded in 2015 our first class was the fall of 2016 uh we were created from two Legacy institutions UT paname and UT Brownsville plus a brand new school of medicine um we are a massively uh geographically located institution across 200 miles of the United States Mexico border um I believe we're up to six campuses at the moment um and so we have a a huge uh swath to cover in terms geographically um are we have goals of becoming an emerging research University which I believe is a Texas uh only status um and finally with Carnegie R1 as a middle ground impact and finally with the ability and and clearly measurable Community impact uh you can see our total research expenditures um this will be reported to the herd um we are looking at close to $90 million uh in research for the NSF herd and we have had some pretty significant growth over the last year um some of the operational metrics that we capture to help measure that growth are the number of proposals submitted the number of awards and the number of expenditures and you can see in our in our uh in our chart here that we have been growing pretty steadily over the last several years years um with a with a pretty significant jump last year um from $98 million to over $200 million in total funded amount and um as I was putting this chart together someone mentioned that I was left-handed and they were right and you can see because I've been reading it uh from right to left in the most current years all to the right to the left there Christina any other commentary about the growth of utrgv I know you've been here uh since the beginning yes I came from one of the Legacy institutions and um research used to be something that was part of academic Affairs and then whenever utrb was created um it turned into its own um division with a focus of increased research and um the expectation of growth and um that is proven by the the chart that that Thomas is sharing right now they've done incred work since um since he came well not not not just me but an amazing everybody came yes so um so Christina let's talk about some HR opportunities at utrgv so um actually let's go back to the the um to one of the legac institutions because we used to have a um a a committee that would meet and really talk about okay how do we make sure that that uh research is basically in everybody's job description and um it was it was small at that time but um whenever the division of research was created um I've always worked kind of hand inand with the respective leader to make sure that we do support them with the hires we do um support them with the with the job descriptions because at that point we were basically tasked with creating all of these new job descriptions and um because before as I said it was a smaller undertaking it was uh less job descriptions less Focus um and um we got very direct marching orders in in 2015 to grow the research Enterprise and part of that was to go ahead and create those those job descriptions um and come up with the right mixup specialized and generic to make sure that the right support is there for for our pis and for uh the research Enterprise So based on how we need it um we're being flexible and as we see that that something's may be working or may not work we are um tweaking it because uh like Zoya was saying salary ranges are not a once andone job descriptions are living breathing documents and um we need to be prepared to um react to how um your Market is changing and um that's what we're that's where we're there to support um the division of research with to make sure that we give them the tools to be able to hire the right individuals into their positions and then to be able to to keep them and make sure that we exceed that that two-year time frame and really build and keep that institutional knowledge and I will note that Christina probably hears from me more than most of her other uh customers because we are constantly tweaking um research and research Administration job descriptions and job roles to try to better meet the market um as as it says here on the slide we have 49 job descriptions within the division of research that does include it sounds like a lot but that does include pre-award post award development compliance animals um and and another quite a wide breadth of of jobs and each one of them generally has anywhere between four and five positions before you get to what we call a& P the director level and so we picked this sample job family here which is which is our pre-award group to demonstrate that we do have uh gradiation as as disced as discussed by toughs um but for an outside person or someone who's not necessarily in the role they may not necessarily quickly understand the difference between a coordinator and an associate which is why we have to make sure that the job descriptions can can provide that level of uh understanding um I I'll give a little bit of a case study um an example of of how we're able to navigate um with individual humans um this is a anonymized discussion of someone who actually worked in the division of research we had a student that was hired as a student worker in the division of research uh she was hired directly out of her Bachelor of business into a junior coordinator role at utrgv after three years she was promoted into a senior coordinator she sought and completed her MBA and her certified research administrator uh certification however there was no line of direct promotion as both the manager and the director in that line of in that line of work was already occupied so the supervisor and Human Resources worked to identify opportunities in the vision of research uh the candidate was given the opportunities to demonstrate those needed skills and seek those needed uh criteria and then the candidate was applied for and was hired as the manager in an office of compliance so um we we had to work with and find uh solutions to keep a a very excellent person all the way from a student all the way into leadership um and it it required a lot of it required a lot of handholding and a lot of of of actually working with human resources at every level but because Human Resources was so flexible and willing to do that with us we had a a pretty excellent success story so I I did want to make sure that we didn't just say that you know as Christina noted there is no right or wrong way to do this and so there have been some challenges at utrgv as well um balancing the flexibility and structure flexible roles and non-standard naming um as I think the the are showed us can limmit career advancement and confuse career pathing for staff if there is not a clear designated step ladder of where you want to be and where you can be then it can be confusing for for for employees who sometimes might see human resources or even job roles as kind of a black box they know they're there but they may not know how to get to them and they may be uh not willing to have conversations with their supervisors um for collaborating I think I talked about this ensuring that our roles fit the research need while maintaining internal quality um we do not want to hire people or give them the role of senior simply because they've been in a role for specific number of years uh they need to demonstrate that they're actually able to do the next job up for the job that they're applying for um Christina noted um that there have been a number of leadership changes in the early days of the division of research and that did not necessarily allow for the attention to review the job rules sometimes job roles are addressed as on an as needed basis and so uh if there's not been a duration of leadership no one might have never had a chance to sit down and say okay of these 49 jobs should there really only be 36 or should there be 57 and there has not been that opportunity to do that and actually that's something cistina and I are working on right now um starts and St starts and restarts during the growth of the University as a brand new University there have been growing pains and and growing opportunities um but that that has proven to be challenging at times and then we have a large population in the Rio Grande Valley but few are trained to support research Administration which means we can't hire subject matters experts locally um along the along that border uh that I show it on the map we have a population of about 1.4 million people but unlike some of the other major metropolitan areas in Texas and other states there really aren't a number of of universities or colleges that are all doing similar work and so we don't have an opportunity to hire someone from the college across the street or across the city and so we we're we are having to by the nature of where we are geographically located train hire Junior people and train them into senior roles if we want those people to be uh local to the university Christine any other commentary on that one yes and in addition to I mean once we do have our employees train trained um we do sometimes run into this situation that um other institutions do hire them away and um then we we go right back to the remote work part because they don't even have to move they can work remote um with um another institution somewhere in Texas outside of Texas and um they they have a lot of flexibility um so we've because we have lost people to to out of state employers and um it is loss of institutional knowledge and um that's something we we try to avoid as much as possible um but sometimes we do see them leave that is a good point in fact one at one point in the last year I was getting a coffe at Starbucks and I saw someone who used to work for utrgv and she now has a job on the west coast and she didn't move so that's that's a real challenge we have someone we hired someone within the last year and a half from Texas I don't know exactly from where I can't remember where the person came from but we we do have the person working remotely from Texas well we're happy we could help and that's something we're Limited in because um the the moment we look at employees outside of Texas we're going to have to deal potentially with a lot stricter employment laws that apply in in for those employees then and May may also apply for any employee reporting to them so we have to be extremely careful of of how much uh remote hybrid work we we're able to do that's true so I think what what we found is that during our case study of reviewing uh our two institutions that and and feel free to chime in we're different I think everyone on this call is probably different but we all have similar goals um and think we when we looked at our differences and our similarities I think we we kind of tried to drill it down to some takeaways for everyone else is that uh communication between research Administration and and Human Resources must be frequent you must have a relationship between your division of research however you whatever the name of it is in your Human Resources area it must be frequent and you must be comfortable with that conversation as I noted Christina and I we talk probably twice a week about something either it's a an upd a Grant application going out we need to determine what the what the roles will be on that or how are we working on hiring new people but Christina uh Christina deals with me quite often um some differences the formal job family versus a flexible approach and I think Christina hit the nail on the head there there is no right or wrong it's just how your institution has been and how your institution wants to be I I really I really enjoy the way tus does that that that clear demarcation for me is is is excellent but then they're having the flexibility for us to be able to provide um a case study for a student all the way to a leader and finding her a a unique path is also very useful for us as well uh the success factors are both are focused on Talent acquisition development retention and organizational growth this entire this entire uh concept of of growing research in in the United States right now is undergoing a a huge um a huge growth that the universities want to grow um in fact Zoya you were you were talking about a new program of apprenticeship at tus and I'd love you to share a little bit about that if you're comfortable sure uh thanks uh Thomas uh so the apprenticeship program is also funded by NSF granted uh and uh it will be a six uh months program for people from a nearby community college to uh come and learn uh some of the elements of research Administration and research compliance jobs so we uh are planning uh to bring people to uh toughs in the fall of 2025 uh and they will prior to that will be taking two uh specific courses at the community college over the summer over the next summer so that's uh kind of the plan uh right now um for that program and we will be sharing results more uh broadly because it's a pilot program to uh understand conceptually whether or not uh a pipeline from Community College is a viable pipeline into research administration because as you said uh Thomas uh it's it's very hard to find people and I can assure you that uh even if you have uh other colleges across the street and in the same city it doesn't get any easier because there is always fewer professionals than than uh positions and we are kind of all trying to steal people from each other uh and uh and and we we're in a similar situation as as you guys are um that's thank you excellent I I love the the concept of an apprenticeship program for those of you who might be uh members of inura I noticed an email coming out from them a couple days ago about a new type of membership for apprenticeship so that might be something for those of you on the call who are looking who are in positions where you have that Authority at your University maybe an apprenticeship is something that you could look into to help build that that uh that base of uh Build That Base of potential future employees um Christina any any commentary on moving forward um basically yes any kind of internship would be great and um getting um as part of my job in H are also oversee um student employment and um at any given point we have 2,500 student employees working on campus a lot of them are within research and um some of them may turn into future research professionals so um definitely train your students as much as possible because um yes some of them are doing it because they were word at work study and and they want the extra paycheck and then later on they want to move on into their their job in whatever but um you may get that one or two those one or two individuals who are going to decide you know what later on when they're looking for a job they're going to come back to research administration because it's it's a unique mix of you deal with numbers you deal with people you deal with you don't you're not just a onetick pony you you have a variety of of opport unities in in this field and that's something that actually appeals to our student population and and I always like to give everyone who comes to one of these things an opportunity for something that's takeway and it's real um every every member of the UT system schools schools publishes their job duties and job roles on their websites and so if you wanted to go and take an opportunity to look at some other universities job roles and job duties you can go looking for them on the University websites find them and do a comparison and bring some real world examples back to your University and so rather than having a conversation of this is what I would like to do but you don't have any examples to it now you would have examples of utrgv toughs and you can also go and find other universities job descriptions as well often times those aren't included or or easy to find in Google and so if you go looking for job Duty descriptions in for research Administration you're going to get the standard glass your situation things like that it's probably not going to be helpful for you but if you go to the websites and you go to human resources for different universities there's often a good chance you're actually going to be able to find the actual job descriptions that you can use as comparison and contrasting for your roles at your University as well so I just wanted to make sure that everyone knew that that's a great way to take something real and valuable out of this communication beyond our case studies I I like this idea Thomas of uh sh sh ing experience that you're uh promoting and as I was listening uh to uh uh you and Christina talk about the job descriptions I realized that uh you know conceptually uh we're talking about two different approaches for the job descriptions so you were talking about flexibility of the job description and growing those job descriptions in real time or evolving them in real time as our landscape changes and conceptually we are approaching it from a very different angle we are trying to pull um things like for example assist researchers in building proposals that's not going to change that's not going to evolve you know we used to have things like uh has to be knowledgeable uh to submit proposals in Fast Lane and fast lane of course is gone and now there is research that go and so we no longer include things like that but like understand and apply uh sponsor and University regulations and guidelines that's also not going to change so we are trying to make our job descriptions very Dan very very high level and put things in there that are not going to uh become obsolete or or we would need to keep an eye on them very often of course we we revisit them every so often but we we try to avoid things that are going to give us more work so there is economy of of effort shall we say in the in in this approach oh and I have I have greatly learned from yours so I appreciate that very much um I think there I think we're at questions if we have any questions um Christina are there any questions that in the uh in the actual chat box not right now I did not see there was that one but that was it okay we do have a few minutes so I want to encourage folks to to post questions if you have questions and uh I'll take advantage Zoya I'm super excited to hear about your apprenticeship program I think it's really great and I I appreciate that you are doing it as a pilot and are going to uh publish your results so we can learn from what you all I'm hoping one of my collaborators is also on this call but yes we are we are definitely going to uh evaluate this and publish but I also before we wrap up I also want to give uh a sort of highlight one other point that was made uh I think by both Thomas and Christina how important collaboration is with the HR and uh I I don't have um an HR rep presenting with me today but uh I want to say that uh this work is not possible uh at all without uh collaboration with HR and uh at T especially because we are decentralized uh HR is Gatekeepers for uh any requests for compensation promotion hiring and what not and so if we don't have this collaboration there is no way to maintain Fidelity with the job family so I just wanted to give to give more prominence to this point because research administrators alone cannot do this it's true well as an instructor I'm good at wait time but I don't want to we could just keep waiting but um I'll take this time to to thank our panelists and our speakers thank you it's really um been wonderful to spend time with you this afternoon and and thinking about this important thing which I think virtually any institution is facing so it was it was great to to see where your successes are and thank you for for sharing your pain points as well thank you for having us we really appreciate it yeah thank you so much I think with that we will wrap things up and as I mentioned at the top we will be sharing this recording and and slides out with presenters and uh I I'll have it posted on our epcore uh website as well thank you have a great afternoon everyone thank you bye bye bye bye thank you