RESEARCH ADMINISTRATION SPECIALIST, College of Arts & Sciences, Administration at Boston University in BOSTON, MA

Established in 1873, Arts and Sciences is Boston University's largest and most academically diverse unit, encompassing over 8,400 undergraduates, 2,000 graduate students, 800 faculty members, and 300 staff across 50 departments, programs, centers, and institutes. Our faculty are award-winning researchers, innovative teachers, and dedicated mentors committed to exploring the complexities of our present and past, uncovering new perspectives, and crafting creative solutions to real-world problems. Our staff are dynamic, mission-driven professionals who foster community, inclusion, and belonging to advance every aspect of the college enterprise. Our community thrives on collaboration, bold ideas, and interdisciplinary exploration. Join us in supporting the pursuit of knowledge that changes the world and provides boundless opportunities to inspire the next generation of leaders. We offer generous benefits, including health, dental, and life insurance, tuition remission, retirement savings, paid time off, and holiday leave. The Research Administration Specialist provides technical assistance and skilled administrative support to the Associate Deans of the Faculty, faculty and research administrators. In this role, they will support training and onboarding efforts for the university grants management process for external funding, in order to create efficiencies and maintain compliance that effectively support an increase in the number and quality of research proposals. The position will provide pre-award capacity building across the college in cases of long absences/leaves. This support includes assisting with preparing budgets, ensuring compliance with the sponsor's requirements and University policies. The Specialist will also work with the Director of Research Administration to establish training and onboarding guidelines, tools and workshops in grants management that support and improve research administration, such as onboarding new administrators, setting up training workshops and orientation programs for staff and faculty. They will assist the Director in developing and maintaining the CAS website sections on research opportunities and support. The Specialist will report to the CAS Director of Research Administration and will work closely department research administrators.

Key Responsibilities:

Support research administrators and faculty with training and/or onboarding. This includes maintaining training materials and researching and communicating new policies, procedures and requirements by attending Sponsored Programs workshops, webinars and trainings online.`
Oversee the process and assisting CAS pre-award teams when their team does not have capacity to provide coverage for absences or need support for large grants when appropriate.
Manage and document the internal grant approval and implementation process by overseeing the delivery of applicable forms, signatures and documentation for proposal submission.
Work with CAS Director to find ways to communicate CAS research output which includes website updates, semi and annual reports, funding reports, CAS research supported events.

Skills

The College seeks a candidate who is highly organized, meticulously detailed, and able to multi- task. Candidate will be self-motivated and take the initiative, following through on all projects until completion. Candidate will be comfortable working independently, but also able to work with teams of other colleagues. This is a full-time, 12-month position housed in the College and complying with the CAS community-wide three days in office and two days remote schedule to support CAS culture. It requires strong customer service oriented skills in support of the CAS RA community with critical mind to solve complex problems that arise in research. They will have opportunity to be innovative in approaches to build more efficiencies.

BA/BS required.
5-8 years of experience.
Strong Microsoft Office skills.
Strong verbal and written skills, project management, and interpersonal skills are also essential to this position.
Experience training and/or teaching is also a plus.

We are an equal opportunity employer, and all qualified applicants will receive consideration for employment without regard to race, color, natural or protective hairstyle, religion, sex, age, national origin, physical or mental disability, sexual orientation, gender identity, genetic information, military service, pregnancy or pregnancy-related condition, or because of marital, parental, or veteran status. We are a VEVRAA Federal Contractor.