I sometimes get the feeling that research administration, at least at the level I unaccountably find myself, is nine-tenths smoke and mirrors. Spectacular stuff happens, and even our most beady-eyed critics believe that we research administrators have had something to do with it. This in no way minimizes the great service to America provided by the member institutions and individual members of the Society of Research Administrators (SRA). You are stewards of one of the scarcest resources in education: research dollars (private, state and federal). You find ways to decrease the cost of doing business, stretch the research dollar and encourage the research process, without driving up research administrative overhead.