Conference: Charting & Expanding Needed Trails to Research Administration & Leadership (CENTRAL)

The Charting & Expanding Needed Trails to Research Administration & Leadership (CENTRAL) conference, hosted by the Association of Public and Land-grant Universities at Alabama A&M University, will develop a comprehensive map of career pathways which produce the nation’s senior research officers (SROs). As it is a national need to bring the benefit of research leadership to an expanding breadth of institutions across the nation, more university research leaders are needed to reflect the diversity of both their institutions and the citizen populations with which they engage. Charting the pathways that produce senior leaders, and identifying ways institutions and associations might remove roadblocks from them, will enable the diverse aspiring leaders of today to assume the mantle of tomorrow’s leadership needs. To accomplish this goal, the CENTRAL Conference will convene up to 75 experts in the research leadership, training, and administration fields at the Alabama A&M University. Experts and speakers will be selected from the Association of Public and Land-grant Universities (APLU), National Organization of Research Development Professionals (NORDP), and Center for Advancing Research Impact in Society (ARIS) to identify the career pathways of senior research officers. CENTRAL will host interactive discussions to 1) Identify key paths that individuals take to arrive at senior research leadership roles, recognizing that the paths for diverse candidates have additional attributes and constraints, and 2) identify the roles that institutions and associations play in introducing individuals to the opportunities and barriers of pursuing research leadership and recruiting them to a career in senior research leadership and administration. This project serves to build the foundation of knowledge required for future research leadership development programs which address roadblocks to producing future research leaders. This award reflects NSF's statutory mission and has been deemed worthy of support through evaluation using the Foundation's intellectual merit and broader impacts review criteria.