By Jody Hirsh, Senior Research Administrator (and CRA) in the Chemistry of Life Processes Institute.
Recertification of your Certified Research Administrator (CRA) status is required at the end of each 5-year period. This involves submission of your employment history in the field, documentation of 80 contact hours Continuing Education activities over the past 5 years, 3 questions suitable for future CRA exam, and payment of a $195 fee/$295 late fee via an electronic application on the Research Administrators Certification Council (RACC) web site, https://www.cra-cert.org/
What are Continuing Education Contact Hours?
As defined by the RACC, one Continuing Education (CE) contact hour is equal to one hour of time taken OR taught which is related to any aspect of research administration. The requirement: is to earn 80 hours over 5 calendar years beginning Jan 1 of the year you were last certified.
Educational activities include:
• Teaching a class, workshop, or seminar
• Serving on professional journal or review boards
• Serving on boards of relevant national associations (e.g. NCURA)
• Writing articles
• Participating in workshops and seminars
• Completing academic courses
• NU advisory board participation (including NURAP)
Caveats: You may not count activities performed as an expected part of performing your regular job duties. In addition, some types of activities have maximum limits for number of hours.
See table at http://www.racc-cert.org/recertification-application-3/recertification-application/
To assist tracking your CE, one suggestion is to save all of your documentation in a personal NU Box folder. Using a calendar program such as Outlook to schedule and apply a custom category label (such as “Training”) to your CE activities is also helpful. You can search your calendar by category and easily find everything for a selected time period. But do not wait until the last minute to get it all together!!
Documentation of CE Contact Hours
An optional but extremely helpful & highly recommended Contact Hour Tracking Log can be found at http://www.racc-cert.org/wp-content/uploads/2018/04/RACC_Contact-Hours_Tracking_Log_GeneralAndSpecialty2.xls
In support of the activities listed in the tracking log, you should keep copies of any National/Regional meeting registrations; Certificates of Completion, and meeting notes taken. You do not normally have to provide these backup documents with your application; however, the RACC performs random audits of applicants and you could be asked to provide them.
Some other suggestions are to save all documentation in a personal NU Box folder. This way you can easily find it and it is readily accessible. Using a calendar program such as Outlook to schedule and apply a custom category label (such as “Training”) to your CE activities is also helpful. You can search your calendar by category and easily find everything for a selected time period. But do not wait until the last minute to get it all together!! Entry of your info into the RACC application is time consuming and you may not be able to save a partially completed form.
How to earn CE with NURAP!
One way to earn CE is to become a member of the NURAP Steering Committee. This is NURAP’s decision making body. Steering committee members may work in any aspect of managing sponsored research but must have worked at Northwestern for at least one year. The subcommittees available are the Executive, Continuing Education, Communications and Outreach, Membership, and Programming Subcommittees. Each has two or more Co-Chairs. The aim is to maintain a broad representation of job titles, departments, schools, and campuses. RFAs are usually circulated annually on the NURAP listserv during the summer quarter.
If you don’t feel ready to commit to being on the Steering Committee, we also welcome anyone who would like to become an ad hoc member of a one of the subcommittees. Ad hoc members do not participate or vote in Steering Committee meetings, however they provide useful assistance and input to the Steering Subcommittees with certain tasks.
Other CE earning opportunities are attending or presenting @ NURAP@noon; attending or presenting at the CRA training sessions, and attending NCURA webcasts (co-sponsored by OSR and the Office of Financial Operations). And last but not least, writing for the RAP UP, as I am doing right now, will earn CE!
For more information please email us at NURAP@northwestern.edu & visit our website at http://www.nurap.northwestern.edu/.