TRACC (Tufts Research Administration and Compliance Cohort)

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.

The Tufts Research Administration and Compliance Cohort (TRACC) project will provide proof-of-concept that community college students, both degree holders and those who are currently enrolled, can be a valid workforce for growing research administration and compliance staffing nationwide. Its goals are to design, implement, and evaluate a scalable and replicable model for an apprentice program for community college students to explore careers in research administration and compliance.

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). A mixed methods evaluation will be performed to evaluate the experiences of the apprentices, their hosting departments, and a cost-benefit analysis to determine if a program of this nature can be scalable at emerging institutions.

If successful, this will have a dual impact: first, an increase in the potential pool of staff for research administration and compliance positions nationwide, especially for less resourced institutions. Second, the diversification of the research administration workforce, drawing on the economically and racially diverse population of America’s community college students to fill the need for trained research administration and compliance staff.

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.

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.