Project Summary

Research administration and research compliance are essential to a successful research enterprise, requiring professional staff to support investigators in their research. Despite the importance of these positions, the candidate pool for these jobs is both inadequate to meet demand and frequently does not reflect the diversity of investigators at research institutions. An under-tapped source of future research and compliance administrators is community college students. The overall objective of this project is to develop, deploy, and test the feasibility of the Tufts Research Administration and Compliance Cohort (TRACC), a pipeline of candidates for research administration and compliance jobs from a community college to a research institution, using a scalable apprenticeship model. This proposal will test the hypothesis that with appropriate supports before and during an apprenticeship, community college students can help to fill critical entry-level research administration roles across the country, creating a diverse pipeline into the profession. This will be accomplished via a partnership with Bunker Hill Community College (BHCC) to find and prepare a cohort of seven apprentices for a six-month mentored apprenticeship in either research administration (n=5) or research compliance (n =2).

The expected outcome of this project is the validation of an apprenticeship model to prepare community college students to be successful in research administration and compliance roles, supporting the nation’s research enterprise by increasing research support capacity through additional resources. As community colleges are found across the nation, these individuals can provide co-located support with specialized skills and knowledge to those at emerging institutions who require resources to bring their sponsored research and scholarship ideas to fruition.

Project Timeline

Project Team

Zoya Davis-Hamilton, Associate Vice Provost for Research Administration (contact PI)
Theodore Myatt, Associate Vice Provost for Research Integrity
Sarah Marina, Director of Research Administration Enterprise
Adam Carlson, Research Administration Associate Director
Carla Abate, Assistant Director of Workforce & Economic Development, BHCC

Supported by the National Science Foundation

The TRACC program is made possible through a grant No. OIA 2414119 from the National Science Foundation under the Growing Research Access for Nationally Transformative Equity and Diversity (GRANTED) initiative, which aims to foster diversity and opportunity in research.