Abstract

Globalization continues to connect research teams across institutional and geographic boundaries at an accelerating pace. To foster sustainable growth of the research enterprise, there is an increasing demand for research managers and administrators (RMAs) adept in supporting transcontinental research in diverse circumstances. Facilitating such partnerships requires a deep understanding of where and how international researchers connect, and how to leverage institutional resources to spur research collaborations. In North America specifically, RMA professionals in the growing field of research development (RD) – who pursue a range of strategic activities to advance research capacity at the researcher, unit, and institutional level – increasingly play an important role in supporting such international research partnerships at their institutions.
A growing number of institutions globally have established branch campuses in international locations and even more are developing international partnerships in on-campus centers or other infrastructure as hubs to develop research across geographic boundaries. This presentation will explore how RMAs can leverage different models of the internationalization of research to stimulate transcontinental research partnerships. The presenters, RD professionals from Saint Louis University, Syracuse University, and the University of Massachusetts Lowell, have decades of collective experience in these models and will offer examples from three different perspectives. The first is based at a North American home campus with an established international branch campus in Europe. The second spent nearly a decade at the Middle Eastern international branch campus of a North American research intensive university. And the third is based at a North American public university that has center-based international partnerships, but no branch campus. Attendees will take away a greater understanding of how infrastructure inside and outside their institutions can be leveraged for international research opportunities, the roles branch campuses and partnerships play in international research collaborations, the positions of RMAs and RD professionals in the process, and approaches to overcoming the unique challenges presented by supporting transcontinental research teams.