Director Pre-Award Administration, Khoury College

About the Opportunity

Reporting to the Senior Associate Dean for Finance and Administration, the Director will lead a team of three pre-award research administrators focused on service excellence, continuous improvement, and compliance with policies and procedures. The Director plays a leadership role at Khoury College ensuring excellent customer service and operational effectiveness. Working closely with Post-award and the Office of Research Administration and Finance (NU-RES), the Director monitors the entire pre-award process to ensure success from proposal preparation to notice of award to grant execution.

Duties also include proactive outreach to faculty, faculty training, facilitating multidisciplinary collaborations between faculty, NU-RES and post-award services. Serve as pre-award expert on regulations (including the Uniform Guidance and the FAR), agreement terms, and college policies, practices, and priorities for pre-award activities. The Director represents Khoury on issues of pre-award administration working with university offices and departments.

The Director also provides quality control over the work output of the team by enhancing and enforcing standard operating procedures, staff accountability and quality standards. The position monitors and reports on team productivity and status as required or requested by college leadership. They also serve as a subject matter expert, advising the pre-award team, Associate Dean of Research, Director of Research Development and the broader research community on a variety of areas impacted by or relating to research administration, including proposal review and submission, award negotiation and acceptance.

The Director partners with other Khoury staff and the Senior Associate Dean on establishing and executing college-wide initiatives and priorities, such as policy and procedure development and implementation. Working closely with the Senior Associate Dean and Director of Research Development, approves proposals in the Paws system at the “Department Top Approver” level. The Director will review, approve and process grant modifications, and no-cost extensions.

Maintenance of appropriate documentation will be required for processing pre-award, post-award and grant closeouts.

Necessary job responsibilities include developing a comprehensive knowledge of the faculty research needs for the college, communicating effectively with faculty and managing staff members.

• Direct and establish priorities for day-to-day operations, conduct strategic planning to align with our research mission.
• Successfully manage dynamic workload, meet changing stakeholder and customer demands.
• Establish and ensure ongoing application of processes and best practices for all services provided by the team. Standardize workflow, communications flow, status tracking, and documentation processes for all tasks, such as new application, progress report, and JIT requests, and new funding type determinations.
• Represent the pre-award team for the college, interacting with faculty, Finance & HR, leaders of NU-RES offices, and others. Promote success of the pre-award team by working closely and collaboratively with all constituents including Associate Dean of Research and Director of Development. Maintain positive relationships with faculty, address escalated issues and concerns, especially complex matters related to large, multi-PI grants.
• Facilitate portfolio model and ensure cross-coverage and seamless support during personnel leaves and transitions.
• Foster a compliant environment by staying abreast of changes in agency regulations, requirements, and policies and disseminating agency information. Keep informed of emerging federal issues that will impact sponsored programs.

• Provide problem resolution to pre-award team and (where relevant) include escalation, work delegation, retention, training, performance management, feedback, and alignment to achieve college goals.
• Lead efforts to review and improve business practices, provide action oriented and expert support to principal investigators.
• Serves as a technical resource to pre-award staff in interpreting…