Structuring a Departmental Research Administration Office to Combat a High-Demand Workload and Offset Administrative Burden

Departmental research administrators offer a wide range of support services to research communities, university central offices, and fellow research administrators in other departments and institutions around the world. It is important for department-level research administration offices to function as a unit to provide centralized services that maximize the potential for successful funding and accounting outcomes. The Office of Grants and Contracts in the University of Pittsburgh's Department of Psychiatry established an intra-office structure that operates as a central office proxy designed to offset the impact of a high-volume submission and active grants management portfolio. This reorganization included dedicated pre-award and post-award teams, a data management team, a personnel/purchasing team, and a fiscal team that offer support and infrastructure within the OGC and to the Department of Psychiatry at the University of Pittsburgh. This case study describes pre-intervention challenges and post-intervention outcomes, and how this model may be applied to any administrative setting, regardless of submission or award volume, to help define roles, systemize services, inform best practices, and improve procedures.