Conference: GRANTED DCL: Arizona Regional Coalition of Leaders in Advanced Research Administration (CLARA)

The Arizona Regional Coalition of Leaders in Advanced Research Administration (CLARA) seeks to leverage existing knowledge of experienced individuals to create high-quality, free onboarding, continuing professional development libraries, and an active professional network for research administration practitioners. Research administration practitioners provide investigators with administrative research support including submitting, negotiating, and managing projects funded by external organizations. For most institutions of higher education, the federal government is the largest source of funding. Expertise in navigating these processes allows the scientific experts to advance research in their discipline and focus on educating and mentoring students rather than the administrative side of research. Additionally, experts in research administration can assist to decrease the risk of developing compliance issues which can be costly to manage and can also lead to unethical research practices or actual harm to individuals impacted by specific research studies. The establishment of CLARA will help advance knowledge-building in several ways. CLARA will develop and document the process of establishing a scalable, truly collaborative regional coalition. The three state universities governed by the Arizona Board of Regents currently host a semi-annual research administration conference. The existing collaboration will be leveraged to engage with emerging research and minority-serving institutions. As CLARA grows, it will develop and share knowledge on best practices for pooling resources at a regional scale, workforce development best practices for recruitment, onboarding, and retention, and creating a compliance driven research ecosystem. 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.