A Researcher's Guide to Administrative Positions in Higher Education

Are you a trained researcher considering an administrative role or being asked to take on more administrative duties as part of your current role? If so, this shift can cause some confusion, anxiety, and uncertainty. You may wonder how your research experience will translate, what will be expected of you in this different professional landscape, and which parts of your current approach you'll need to rethink.

The good news is that you probably already have many of the skills you'll need. At the same time, some aspects of administrative work may require you to adapt your approach, particularly when it comes to working across units, managing timelines, communicating with audiences, and balancing your own goals with broader institutional priorities.

Get Comfortable Collaborating Across Units

We previously wrote on navigating the complex ecosystem of higher ed and the i mportance of engaging in interdisciplinary work. With these concepts in mind, an important aspect of administrative work is cross-unit collaboration.

In administrative or staff roles in higher ed, many situations will arise where you will have to work with people who have different strategic priorities from you. This type of work calls for you to recognize different work styles, practice strong communication, and identify ways to achieve the different goals of everyone in the group.

Some researchers are accustomed to working closely with colleagues, whether as part of a lab, research team, or interdisciplinary project. Others spend the majority of their research careers working independently. Depending on your particular experience, you may need to adjust your mindset around collaboration and get comfortable working as a team.

For example, Mallory is a historian by training, and all of her research as a graduate student was based on archival work that she was solely responsible for. As a result, there was an adjustment period after she received her doctoral degree and moved into a staff position where she served on multiple committees and planning groups. She learned how to trust the professionals she was working with rather than taking up all the work herself.

Learn To Manage Multiple Timelines

Administrative work may require you to think about progress and deadlines differently than you have in your research. Graduate students, in particular, may be accustomed to clearly defined milestones that mark progress, such as coursework, comprehensive exams, dissertation proposals, or final projects. In these different stages, there are structured deadlines and often someone more experienced to provide feedback and ensure progress.

No universal standards exist for administrative staff roles like they do for many academic disciplines. Goals are often set and measured through annual performance evaluations, but they differ depending on the individual, the role, and/or the institution. So, you have to take ownership over setting your own benchmarks and goals, sometimes with minimal oversight from your manager. The good news is that graduate training often relies on being proactive and self-sufficient.

You may also find yourself juggling multiple timelines. Faculty and graduate students will be most familiar and comfortable with an academic calendar that divides the year up into semesters or quarters, depending on the institution.

But administrative roles require additional frameworks. Aligning with fiscal year deadlines is important for managing budgets and tracking expenses, while contracts with external parties may align with the traditional January-December timeframe. Learning the nuances of these timelines will help you plan ahead and manage responsibilities effectively.

Adapt Your Communication Approaches

Share your results and key information early in emails. The average university employee receives 80-120 emails per day. Therefore, helping your recipients quickly grasp the most relevant information becomes essential when other emails and priorities are competing for attention. Unlike a peer-reviewed article where researchers walk the readers through the research process for academic rigor, administrative professional communication calls for efficiency and clarity.

Keep readability in mind, too. Communication has been central to every job Yi has held. Transitioning from a graduate student to a professional in higher ed, she adapted quickly to using shorter sentence structures and paragraphs for ease. Researchers often conduct audience analysis before a conference presentation. Similarly, those skills could be applied to communication approaches in high-touch, sometimes high-stakes scenarios, where your recipients prefer summaries to details.

Don't be afraid to use first person, either. While research focuses on facts and achieves objectivity through third-person narratives, administration reflects complexity, subjectivity, and is more directly tied to individual and institutional cultures and values. Speaking from a first-person narrative can be refreshing and help build trust with the audience which you are communicating with.

Align Your Goals with Institutional Priorities

As a researcher, you may choose to pursue a certain topic because of your passion, and you can decide what you think is the best approach to solving this problem. When you apply for funding or grants, however, you try to connect your research objectives to the funder's mission. Understanding different perspectives and strategic priorities will better position you to find common goals and advance shared work.

University administration resembles the process when larger research teams must collaborate, compromise, and resolve conflicts. Individual administrative units on campus will have slightly different angles but still need to pull their resources together to make something larger happen. Similarly, skilled administrators align themselves closely to the strategic plans of their institutions.

Since most of the administrative projects are to advance institutional missions, the more that you are aligned with the mission and vision of the institution, the more likely you will get support and momentum in your work.

Conclusion

Adding administrative work to your current position or making the transition to a staff role may feel intimidating if your focus has been primarily on research. It can be challenging to know if or when making such a move aligns with your career goals and interests. But we hope this article helps you identify the ways in which your training may have prepared you and the differences to keep in mind as you take these steps in your career path.

Disclaimer: HigherEdJobs encourages free discourse and expression of issues while striving for accurate presentation to our audience. A guest opinion serves as an avenue to address and explore important topics, for authors to impart their expertise to our higher education audience and to challenge readers to consider points of view that could be outside of their comfort zone. The viewpoints, beliefs, or opinions expressed in the above piece are those of the author(s) and don't imply endorsement by HigherEdJobs.