Saturday - October 10th

Sunday - October 11th

Saturday - October 10th

9:00 AM - 10:00 AM

This session establishes the foundation for the program by inviting participants to name the leadership challenges, pressures, and unresolved questions, as well as aspirations they carry into the room. Through structured reflection and facilitated peer dialogue, participants will articulate the most pressing issues in their current roles, which might include navigating institutional politics, leading through compliance and funding uncertainty, motivating faculty without direct authority, or managing the personal weight of senior leadership. These shared challenges become a living agenda that threads through the tabletop scenarios, peer panels, and facilitated discussions across the two days, ensuring the program responds to the cohort's actual needs.

Learning Objectives:

• Articulate the specific leadership challenges, tensions, and aspirations they bring to the program.
• Identify recurring themes and shared pressures across the cohort, recognizing that many challenges are systemic rather than individual.

• Begin building trust and psychological safety with peers, establishing the candor and reciprocity the cohort model depends on.

• Connect their personal challenges to the program's session, creating a personal lens for engaging the content over the two days.

• Set individual learning intentions and identify at least one peer or theme they want to return to as the workshop progresses.

10:00 AM - 11:00 AM

Research strategic plans too often become documents that live on websites but fail to drive decisions. This session examines what separates a plan that genuinely shapes institutional behavior from one that satisfies a checkbox. Participants explore frameworks for environmental scanning, research priority-setting, and cascading strategy to the unit level and practice translating those frameworks into decisions that hold up under pressure from finance, academic affairs, and college leadership. The session also addresses what happens after the plan is written: how to align it with broader institutional priorities and how to keep it current as the funding landscape, institutional context, and strategic opportunities shift over time.

Learning Objectives:

• Distinguish between ceremonial and functional research strategic plans and identify the factors that drive the difference.

• Apply core planning frameworks — environmental scan, priority-setting, and unit-level cascade — to a realistic institutional context.

• Construct a defensible research strategic priority that anticipates resistance from key stakeholders including finance, academic affairs, and college leadership.

• Articulate a compelling strategic narrative that earns buy-in from diverse institutional audiences.

• Align the research strategic plan with broader institutional goals, ensuring it reinforces rather than competes with the institution's overarching mission and priorities.

• Establish a structured review cycle that keeps the plan current and actionable as external funding landscapes, institutional contexts, and strategic opportunities evolve.

11:15 AM - 12:30 PM 

This session examines research compliance across scientific, financial, and regulatory domains, including recent regulatory revisions. Key topics include how to maintain institutional compliance in areas of human and animal subject protections, research integrity, conflicts of interest, export controls, biosafety, research security, and financial compliance requirements such as Uniform Guidance, specific Executive Orders, effort reporting, and subrecipient oversight.

The discussion explores how to align compliance strategies with institutional priorities while managing administrative burden, strengthening governance structures, and fostering a culture of transparent, ethical, efficient, and compliant research. It also addresses evolving challenges, including federal policy changes, data governance, risks in global collaboration, the growing role of AI in research, and increased scrutiny related to foreign influence and research security.

Learning Objectives:

• Enhance understanding of the current federal regulatory landscape and initiatives including updated Uniform Guidance, research security and cybersecurity requirements.

• Explore tools/mechanisms for implementing an effective and comprehensive research compliance program that supports researchers and facilitates research success.

• Address participants specific questions on content and implementation practices.

1:30 PM - 2:30 PM 

This session provides senior research administration leaders with a strategic overview of the rapidly evolving external funding environment and the changing dynamics of sponsor relationships. As federal priorities shift, industry partnerships expand, and global competition intensifies, institutions must proactively adapt their approaches to funding diversification, compliance, and engagement.

Particular emphasis will be placed on the growing role of philanthropic funding as a strategic component of the research enterprise and the need for intentional, coordinated collaboration between research administration and advancement/development offices. As donors increasingly seek measurable impact, interdisciplinary solutions, and closer engagement with institutional research priorities, successful institutions are moving beyond transactional fundraising models toward integrated, mission-aligned partnerships that connect philanthropy to research strategy.

Participants will explore current trends shaping the funding landscape, including federal budget pressures, emerging sponsor priorities, philanthropic and industry growth, and evolving expectations around accountability, collaboration, and impact. The session will highlight how joint planning, shared data strategies, and aligned relationship management practices between advancement and research administration can significantly enhance philanthropic support for research, from early-stage discovery through translation and societal impact.

The session will also examine how sponsor relationships—across federal, industry, and philanthropic sectors—are becoming more complex, performance-driven, and relationship-intensive. This evolution requires a more coordinated, data-informed, and service-oriented institutional approach, including clear delineation of roles and seamless collaboration between advancement officers, principal investigators, and research administrators to cultivate, steward, and sustain donor relationships.

Through discussion and practical examples, leaders will gain insights into positioning their organizations for success, building integrated advancement–research administration models, and navigating risks while maintaining alignment with institutional missions.

Learning Objectives:

• Interpret key trends in the external funding ecosystem and articulate their impact on research administration strategy and operations.

• Adapt engagement approaches to align with evolving sponsor expectations, including increased emphasis on collaboration, transparency, outcomes, and donor engagement in research impact.

• Develop actionable strategies for diversifying funding portfolios, including expanding and effectively leveraging philanthropic funding for research initiatives.

• Design and implement collaborative frameworks between advancement and research administration that align prospect development, proposal strategy, and stewardship of research-focused philanthropic investments.

• Apply integrated relationship management principles to strengthen coordination among advancement, faculty, and research administration, improving communication, trust-building, and long-term partnership success with donors and sponsors.

• Anticipate and mitigate risks associated with changing funding sources, regulatory environments, and blended funding models (e.g., philanthropic–federal or philanthropic–industry partnerships).

• Lead organizational change by aligning advancement and research administration functions, systems, and incentives with broader institutional goals, research priorities, and external funding realities.

2:45 PM - 3:30 PM 

This Rapid-Fire session is designed to allow participants to ask specific and top of mind questions regarding any topic in research administration. The panelist will answer questions submitted virtually and or using the microphones in the room. No question is too complicated or too small, but all questions will be answered.

3:30 PM - 5:00 PM

Research leaders fluent in the language of institutional finance are better positioned to steward resources, protect research infrastructure, and earn credibility with senior leadership. This session will address the financial fluency and strategic insight AVPs, VPRs, and other senior research leaders need to navigate budget negotiations, evaluate institutional financial performance, and make sound decisions in an increasingly complex research environment. Participants will gain a leadership-level understanding of F&A rates, indirect cost recovery, budget model tradeoffs, post-award financial oversight, and the compliance and governance risks that can quietly undermine research operations.

The session will also explore how financial strategy intersects with broader research leadership responsibilities, including subrecipient risk management, ` support and incentive models, infrastructure investment, and balancing administrative burden with effective financial controls. Participants will consider how evolving federal policy, research security requirements, global collaboration risks, and the growing financial implications of data governance and artificial intelligence are shaping the future of research enterprise management.

The format includes an introductory presentation, a peer panel featuring senior research officers who will share budget models and practical lessons learned, and a tabletop exercise that allows participants to apply structured decision-making to a real-world financial challenge. Together, these components will help leaders strengthen their ability to manage risk, sustain operations, and make defensible choices that align financial stewardship with institutional mission and research growth.

Learning Objectives:

• Interpret F&A rates, indirect cost recovery, budget models, and research financial performance to inform strategic decision-making.

• Align funding strategies, cost structures, and research investments with institutional priorities and sustainability goals.

• Identify and mitigate high-risk financial and compliance issues, including cost-sharing commitments, subaward exposure, effort reporting errors, and post-award performance risks.

• Assess subrecipient financial risk and prioritize investments in research infrastructure, faculty support, and operational sustainability.

• Balance administrative burden with strong financial controls and effective governance to improve efficiency and accountability.

• Respond to emerging financial pressures, including policy changes, research security concerns, global collaboration risks, and AI-related impacts on research operations.

• Apply structured triage and decision-making logic to budget constraints to protect compliance-critical functions, strategic investments, and faculty trust.