The 2023-2024 cohort of Early Career Research Administration Fellows found ways to put classroom skills into practice, mentorship from seasoned research administrators, and clarity of future career aspirations through their ORED experiences. When asked about their experiences and the projects they believe had the most impact on ORED, they shared the following.
Brooke Bailey
Major: Microbiology
Hometown: Trussville, Alabama
My most impactful project was aimed at creating efficiencies in the pre-award and post-award processes. To create a more consistent and balanced workload among specialists, I was able to evaluate the number of proposals and awards per UA department and then the sponsor associated with each, whether from NSF or various foundations. By assigning a specialist to a single funding source, they can build competencies specific to that source, become subject matter experts on the specific requirements of that source, and ultimately more efficient in creating the desired outcomes.
Jenna Groeber
Major: Chemical Engineering
Hometown: Center Valley, Pennsylvania
The PI Toolkit to onboard new PIs was my favorite project. Nichole Cavin was a great mentor and outlined the vision of the project but then gave me the autonomy to see the project through. In addition, I was tasked with pulling data from Cayuse to examine and summarize proposal submission rates, average award amounts, and the rate of awards compared to the number of submissions.
Micah Pentecost
Major: Management Information Systems (MIS)
Hometown: Heflin, Alabama
My most fulfilling project that I worked on during my fellowship was the development of an interactive PowerBI dashboard. Prior to my involvement, reporting at ORED relied solely on manual processes, causing visible frustration among team members and stakeholders eager for metrics on research funding. Recognizing these pain points, I set out to revolutionize the reporting landscape by automating nearly all tasks previously carried out in Excel. By creating interactive and visibly appealing reports, I was able to witness first-hand how impactful these reports would be to research administration and researchers campus wide.
Applications for the 2024-2025 cohort of Early Career Research Administration Fellows will open March 8. More information is available online.