Planning: Research Administration Capacity Building at Emerging Research Institutions (ERIs) across the AMericAs (RACIMA)

This planning project aims to increase understanding of the barriers to effective research administration service provision in U.S. Emerging Research Institutions, (ERI) Hispanic Serving Institutions, (HSIs) and Latin American ERI universities. These barriers are slowing science productivity across the U.S. and in Latin America.

The project will plan the development of theoretically-grounded strategies to assist in overcoming these barriers. These include workshops, webinars, and other staff training materials. The project will also build an international network of research administration leaders across the Americas that will assist in the development, assessment, and deployment of these strategies while enhancing capacity for international research project development.

Assessment of research administration capacity enhancement strategies is limited by the lack of studies that are grounded in organizational change theory. This gap is particularly important within the ERI HSI context because these institutions are critical to educating Latino students in STEM fields. Because Latinos comprise about 20% of the U.S. population (25% of U.S. children) low capacity in ERI HSI research administration offices creates barriers to the development of Latino scientists and engineers and, ultimately, slows U.S. success in critical STEM fields.

This project aims to begin to address this problem in partnership with the Hispanic Association of Colleges and Universities (HACU), the NSF-funded VOLARÉ project, and the Association of Public and Land-grant Universities' Council on Research (CoR) through a theoretically-grounded approach to developing capacity enhancement strategies and assessing their impacts.

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.