Thinking about hiring research assistants

Posted on May 14, 2013 by Jo VanEvery 2 Comments

Are you reluctant to hire Research Assistants?

I was reading a blog post about hiring in a small business and this paragraph resonated with conversations I’ve had with researchers. “I believe that I am a genius at some things and not others. And that I need to hire geniuses in the other areas.” It’s a bit different when you think about research assistants because one purpose of hiring them is to provide apprenticeship opportunities. But that just extends this perspective rather than negating it.

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Looking at budgets differently

Posted on June 30, 2011 by Jo VanEvery

This post about budgets expresses something I’ve been thinking about for a while. Leela Sinha is talking about personal budgets but the same applies to any budget, including your grant budget. “try starting with this question: if money were really truly no object (if you knew you could have as much as you wanted), how much would you enjoy spending on each of your budget items?” Translating that to your grant/research budget involves thinking about questions like:

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Why budgets are frustrating

Posted on June 28, 2011 by Jo VanEvery

The most obvious answer is that they are written in a different language: Accountant.

You probably don’t speak accountant very well. And you worry that getting this grant is going to come down to how well you speak accountant. Or that you’ll say something in accountant that doesn’t mean what you think it means.
Dig deeper though and you’ll find that budgets are about values. Devoting resources to something indicates value.

Budgets often make you confront the differences between your values and the values of the organization who is giving you the money, whether that is your employer or an external research funder.

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You got funding! From proposal to project plan

Posted on April 4, 2011 by Jo VanEvery

You got the funding. Now comes the hard part. You can no longer hide your brilliant potential under the bushel of insufficient funds. You will not be judged on whether or not you achieved what you proposed. You will only be judged on whether you make a significant contribution to knowledge. With a budget number in hand, and a clearer sense of the research assistant support available, now is the time to make an actual project plan.

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