A Day In The Life Of A Research Specialist At USC
A Research Specialist at the University of Southern California prioritizes planning and collaboration, spending half their day on grant writing and half on a grant-funded program researching equitable hiring practices. This includes translating complex research findings into "digestible and understandable" formats for nonprofit partners and navigating the unique requirements of different grant applications, such as using a "survey as their way of submitting the grant".
Grant Writing, Collaborative Research, Data Analysis & Interpretation, Communication & Teamwork, Project Management
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Ruth McCormack
Research Specialist
University of Southern California
Barnard College, 2015
University of Southern California, Masters of Public Administration
History, Art History
Education, Nonprofit, Foundations & Grantmaking
Sales and Client Management
LGBTQ
Video Highlights
1. Collaboration is key: The specialist emphasizes the collaborative nature of her work, highlighting the importance of teamwork and communication in successfully completing projects. This aspect is crucial for students interested in research, as it showcases the real-world application of collaboration skills.
2. Diverse tasks and responsibilities: A typical day involves a mix of grant writing, research analysis, and communication with various stakeholders. This variety underscores the dynamic and multifaceted nature of the role, which is appealing to those seeking intellectual stimulation and a diverse range of challenges.
3. Dissemination of research findings: The specialist stresses the importance of translating complex research findings into accessible formats for diverse audiences. This highlights a critical skill in research – the ability to communicate complex information clearly and effectively to non-experts. This is a valuable lesson for students in how to make their research impactful beyond the academic sphere.
Transcript
What does a day in the life of a research specialist look like?
A day in my life, for example, is Monday. It's a great example because no matter what day it is, I look at my priorities for what is due today, tomorrow, this week, and a week from today.
I always plan out the steps I need to take to ensure all my work gets done. Since I work in a very collaborative field, nothing I do is done alone. I have to ensure my part is done so I can pass it on to the next person and collaborate with them.
For instance, that typically involves half the day working on grants and half the day working on my grant-funded program, researching opportunity youth equitable hiring practices. Today, I spent the first half of the day with my opportunity youth team. We figured out how to present our findings more concisely so our nonprofit partners can better understand our lengthy and jargony research paper being presented to the state.
Research jargon and academic papers have a certain way of sounding, but our goal is not to have this research understood only by those who can comprehend those words. We want the knowledge shared with everyone. Today, we had a meeting to discuss how to make it more digestible and understandable for everyone.
This is relevant for hiring for any company. We want to ensure our research and findings can be understood. That was the first half of my day.
The second half was spent answering questions for grant applications and sending them to my teammates. We communicated on Slack to ensure they had time to review them. We brainstormed about how to improve certain things and worked simultaneously in a Google Doc.
Then, we were able to submit a grant. Every grant is different, so part of the fun is figuring out the grant platform they are using. This one, being a smaller grant, used a survey for submission. I very carefully proofread everything three times and submitted the grant. And that was my day.
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