University of Florida

My husband was in the Navy and wanted to move back to Gainesville, FL, where he grew up. I had graduated from College with my bachelors a few years ago and had been in social work since but wanted to branch out and do more. I applied to so many jobs and ended up in home insurance for a few years but it wasn’t making me happy.

The University of Florida is in Gainesville and is one of the bigger employers and they also had great benefits. I applied for 6 months to any job that had administrator in the title but started getting invitations for interviews for the ‘Research administrator’ roles. I had no idea what the job was but knew they were seeing something in my resume that made me a good fit so I started applying to as many of those jobs as a I could.

After 2 interviews and 6 months of applying I was offered a research administrator I position in the College of Engineering and SO quickly fell in love with research administration. I still feel lucky that I found a job that I love, 5 years later!

After working in Quality Assurance for 5 years, I was given the opportunity to transition my QA compliance background into Research Administration in 2017. I have worked at the department level as an RA in medicine, liberal arts, & biomedical engineering. Starting next month, I will transition to an RA manager role for our institutions cancer center.

I began my career in research administration when I took on a new role at my institution. My previous position had a grants assistant who handled all the sponsored programs; however, this new role had many more faculty with larger sponsored research portfolios and I was responsible for managing them all. I learned on the job quickly, and joining NCURA the following year and attending the national conference certainly helped flatten my learning curve.

I worked with the same PI for 18 years at three institutions, first as a postdoc, then research staff, then a grants manager. Along the way, I learned a lot about grant writing and NIH grant submissions. We had terrible luck getting new grants and were running out of money. Fortunately, my wife’s boss saw a job posting for a research administrator position that was perfect for my skillset, and I was able to apply on the last day the job was open. I was hired and started the new job a month later.

I started my career at UF as an assistant to department chair, and I was exposed to the grant world through her funding, as well as that of the faculty. I wanted to move on to Research Administration and after my chair stepped down, I knew it was time to seriously pursue this career path. I was able to join the research administration group at another college within UF. I’ve had the most kind, welcoming set of mentors and supervisor that anyone could ask for. I look forward to many more years of supporting our faculty in their research goals.