Abstract

With the growth of Research Management as a profession more and more Research Management and Administration Societies are seeking to develop robust professional development programs that build and acknowledge professional capabilities. As a result, some RMA Societies are exploring how to curate comprehensive curriculums and programs that lead to professional excellence while recognizing success through accreditation or credentialling.

This session examines the experiences of two Society’s programs – firstly, the Australasian Research Management Society’s (ARMS) accreditation program which has had more than 5,600 unit enrolments since 2013 and has graduated 550 accredited research managers and secondly the Society of Research Administrators International (SRAI) micro-credentialling program, LevelUP, which has had more than 5,500 enrolments and issued 1500 micro-credentials since its launch in 2019. Importantly, both have been well accepted by the research management/administration community. Both are modular in nature and individuals can choose their own pathway via a selection of modules that suits their research management specialisation.

The talk will look at three main considerations:
Firstly, we will discuss the development of the ARMS accreditation program and SRAI’s LevelUP highlighting the design principles for the programs, examine structural differences, and drawi out the key lessons in their development. We will outline the important components of each program including content identification and development and quality assurance processes. We will highlight similarities and differences between the two popular programs.

Secondly, we will outline plans for the future development of each program, in particular showing how they are and will be aligned with career development for individual research managers and administrators.

Thirdly, given the emerging RMA programs in many different countries we will offer some thoughts as to the possibility of a global RMA credentialling program including what elements may be country specific and what elements could be interoperable or transferable.

The two speakers, Mark Hochman and Evan Roberts are ideally placed to talk to these programs and issues. Mark was the Accreditation Program Manager for ARMS who designed the initial accreditation model subsequently adopted by the ARMS Accreditation Council. He also chaired the SRAI task force that designed the LevelUP micro-credentialling program. Evan is the Executive Director of SRAI and has taken LevelUP from design to commercial development and continues to work with SRAI’s Micro-credential Council to develop new modules and pathways for US based research administrators.