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Research Development Review: The NORDP Journal

Abstract

As a practice, research development encompasses activities that expand innovation and discovery for individuals in academia and industry. Within the research development framework, proposal development refers to activities that support individuals and teams in pursuing funding opportunities. Proposal management encompasses a specific suite of rigorous, reproducible, and structured activities dedicated to preparing a persuasive, coherent, and compliant proposal in response to a funding opportunity. While the approach is scalable, the presence of a skilled professional proposal manager is often reserved for multi-institutional, multi-million-dollar proposals. Proposal management is a well-established profession outside of higher education. Proposal management as a profession has become increasingly prevalent among higher education institutions and among research development practitioners. This conceptual paper presents a formal definition of academic proposal management as a distinct profession within research development and separate from industry practitioners. Academic proposal management involves contextualizing industry best practices within the entire proposal development process at universities to secure funding by enhancing efficiency and increasing the competitiveness of submissions. The authors argue that academic proposal management as a professional designation should be considered separately from industry proposal management and as a specialized career path that expands the impact of those in research development.

Author ORCID Identifier

Faye Farmer 0000-0002-5888-4609

Tobin Spratte 0009-0003-6716-4536

Huguette Albrecht 0000-0002-5887-4742

Megan Blease 0009-0008-0349-6984

Additional Files
SuppMaterials_FarmerEtAl_AcademicProposalManagement.pdf (1650 kB)
Exemplar SOW, Swimlane diagram, Composite position description
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