The spark that ignited the concept of SRA International

Labratory Management featured a story about Ken Hartford and his job as business manager of the Biology Department at Yale. The story mentioned the existence of the Association of Research and Educational Administrators. As a result, Hartford received letters from several people in other parts of the country asking if the organization might be expanded to include others.

Hartford invited those interested to meet with him in Washington DC on December 27, 1966. Three accepted the invitation. They were Jack Stacy, David Meyer, and Richard Nicholsen.

It was decided that another meeting should be held to which others involved in similar activities would be invited. It was hoped that this meeting would restut in the formation of a permanent organization. Dave Meyer volunteered to host the meeting at the University of Massachusetts in Amherst.

The Society of Research Administrators is born

of the bylaws, the Society of Research Administrators was born.

The 100 people who attended the Amherst meeting debated the purposes, the name, the membership requirements, the activities and the amount of the dues.

The Amherst meeting closed with a unanimous vote that, "We, the research administrators present, hereby constitute ourselves into an organization." The decisions made at Amherst were formally ratified at the second annual meeting of SRA in Houston, March, 1968.

International Research Administrator Study Tour

They had a meeting at SRA headquarters and heard presentations from Scott Morris, Committee for Economic Development, a panel from the National Academy of Science and National Research Council, including William Colgazier, Jerry Stuck, Anne-Marie Mazza, Allison Rosenberg, Amar Bhat and Carol Alderson from the NIH and Joanna Rom and Robert Hardy from the NSF. The final session of the day was an overview of the Office of Naval Research International Field Office activities.

The word "International" is added to the Society's name



"International" to the organization's name was by consensus of the membership. Lynne remarks, "the outcome of that change has been the evolution of research administration around the globe. SRA has supported new organizations in third world countries as well and new European organizations. International research is beginning to flourish and will, in part, be successful because SRA became SRA International and continues to be a strong proponent of global research procedures."

Benchmarking Project

The NIH awarded a contract to SRA International to conduct a series of focus groups to determine what principal investigators, departmental administrators, sponsored program officials and various NIH administrators thought about its Just-In-Time and Modular Grants Programs.

SRA-Carnegie US-Africa Pilot Training Project

to the United States for a two-week research management study tour. The tour began in New York City and continued to an SRA meeting in Providence, Rhode Island, where the vice chancellors attended special workshops. The tour continued on to Boston and culminated in Washington, DC.

SRA members delivered programs and workshops at universities in many countries in Africa such as Nigeria, Uganda and Ghana.

The program continued in May, 2007, with a visit of an SRA team to Nigeria to identify two universities to improve their stature in the research arena and have teams from those universities visit the United States and to attend SRA's annual meeting.

INORMS Members

Society of Research Administrators International
Association of Research Managers and Administrators
Australasian Research Management Society
Canadian Association of Research Administrators
Danish Association of Research Managers and Administrators
European Association of Research Managers and Administrators
National Council of University Research Administrators
PraxisUnico
Southern African Research and Innovation Management Association
West African Research and Innovation Management Association
The Association of Commonwealth Universities