Admin Core

PROJECT SUMMARY The MPRC Administrative Core has as its goal the provision of services to allow the Center and its Cores to operate as a smooth-running, productive, dynamic, and innovative unit that reaches across the university and to the broader community of population research. The Admin Core provides leadership and strategy for the Center through the Center Director, Associate Director, and Executive Committee faculty roles. This includes advocating for MPRC within the university, and acting as liaison to university administration across its departments, colleges, and schools. The Administrative Core Coordinator, as a full-time staff member, serves a similar function at the level of the unit administrators across our Faculty Associates academic departments. Everyday functions such as Associate and Affiliate membership application and record-keeping are performed by the Admin Core. The Admin Core provides services to the MPRC Executive Committee including meeting preparation and follow-up, and maintaining and retrieving as needed the “institutional memory” of the MPRC. The Admin Core provides logistical and administrative support to researchers for vital functions including external grant submission and management, and for research oversight, compliance, and for research dissemination. The Admin Core provides the administrative services to maintain a moving target of 80 to 90 Faculty Associates, plus those Associates’ sponsored Internal and External MPRC Affiliates. These include resident and visiting scholar UMD paid or unpaid employee appointments. The Admin Core’s information services to the Associates include assistance with writing research press releases, preparation of weekly or bi- weekly electronic circulars of population research news to Associates and Affiliates, and semi-annual Newsletters advertising recent and upcoming MPRC activities to a wider audience. The Admin Core provides support to the Scientific and Technical Core and the Development Cores. It provides highly efficient administrative staffing services to those Cores, including handling of seed grant applications, reserving collaborative and workshop space, tracking of Associates’ and Affiliates’ participation in MPRC activities, and enabling access to both MPRC physical facilities and to university privileges ranging from electronic and library borrowing card provision to payroll system engagement. The physical facilities overseen by the Admin Core include state-of-the-art meeting and conference rooms, collaborative spaces, restricted data laboratories, and offices of MPRC staff and faculty directors, resident and visiting population scientists, and research assistants. The Admin Core also provides support services that are vital for the logistics of conferences and symposia organized by MPRC and held in both MPRC and other campus facilities.