Academic Health Center Research Administration Series™

Clinical & Academic Health Research Pathway™

Full Series | Modules 1–18

Strengthen Academic Health Research Administration Across the Enterprise

Build the institutional perspective needed to understand, diagnose, govern, and strengthen academic health research across interconnected research, clinical care, education, workforce, finance, infrastructure, compliance, partnership, and governance environments.

18 Modules | 18 Contact Hours | Self-Paced | 180-Day Access | Certificate Awarded

Academic health research administration is not the management of one research office. It is the stewardship of an interconnected enterprise where research, care, education, people, resources, and institutional responsibility meet.

Why This Series Matters

Academic health centers bring research, education, patient care, workforce development, institutional resources, and community responsibility into one complex enterprise.

Research administration in this environment requires more than expertise within a single office. Professionals must understand how authority, funding, operations, data, infrastructure, compliance, workforce, and accountability move across medical schools, teaching hospitals, health systems, departments, institutes, affiliates, and research networks.

The Academic Health Center Research Administration Series™ Full Series develops the enterprise-level perspective needed to navigate those relationships and strengthen institutional research capability.

Grounded in the CODE™ Standard

The CODE™ Standard guides learning throughout the series.

Competence
Build the knowledge and institutional perspective needed to understand academic health center structures, research administration models, finance, infrastructure, workforce, compliance, partnerships, and research strategy.

Oversight
Strengthen understanding of governance relationships, shared accountability, decision rights, organizational interfaces, escalation, and enterprise-level research stewardship.

Documentation
Recognize the importance of clear evidence, defined responsibility, reliable information, and defensible institutional decision-making across multi-entity research environments.

Execution
Apply an enterprise perspective to research administration decisions, institutional coordination, capability development, partnership management, and future-state planning.

What You’ll Learn

Upon successful completion of the Full Series, learners will be able to:

• Analyze academic health center structures, missions, governance relationships, and decision rights.
• Evaluate how medical schools, teaching hospitals, health systems, departments, institutes, affiliates, and faculty practices interact.
• Compare research administration models and their implications for service delivery, accountability, workforce capacity, and institutional growth.
• Develop stronger literacy in academic medicine finance, revenue interfaces, institutional investment, shared infrastructure, and mission integration.
• Connect research administration to institutional strategy, growth, infrastructure investment, performance, and research competitiveness.
• Assess clinical and translational research infrastructure, CTSA-type capability models, specialized institutes, research networks, and strategic partnerships.
• Navigate multi-site and multi-entity responsibility, workforce development, compliance interfaces, shared accountability, research finance, and cross-entity risk.
• Evaluate learning health systems, community partnership, innovation, commercialization interfaces, resilience, and future-state research-enterprise readiness.

Who Should Enroll

The Academic Health Center Research Administration Series™ Full Series is designed for professionals and institutional leaders responsible for supporting research administration, clinical research, academic medicine, healthcare operations, and institutional collaboration within academic health centers.

This series may be especially valuable for:

• Academic Health Center Research Administrators
• Clinical Research Administrators
• Research Operations Professionals
• Sponsored Programs Professionals
• Research Finance Professionals
• Research Compliance Professionals
• School of Medicine and Health Sciences Administrators
• Hospital and Healthcare Research Leaders
• Institutional leaders responsible for research, clinical operations, education, and academic health administration

What Makes This Series Distinct

The Academic Health Center Research Administration Series™ focuses on the interconnected institutional environment in which academic health research operates.

Its focus is the governance, organizational interfaces, mission integration, research infrastructure, workforce, finance, compliance, partnership, and shared-accountability conditions that shape research administration across academic health systems.

The series addresses specialized functions at the level needed to understand their institutional interfaces while preserving the distinction between enterprise research administration and deeper specialist instruction within clinical research, finance, compliance, contracting, and other technical domains.

Explore the Curriculum

Module 1: Academic Health Centers: Structure, Mission & Governance

Understand the academic health center as an interconnected enterprise where research, education, patient care, workforce development, community responsibility, and institutional sustainability meet. Examine common organizational structures, governance relationships, mission tensions, decision rights, and the role research administration plays across the enterprise.

Module 2: Medical Schools, Teaching Hospitals & Integrated Health Systems

Examine how medical schools, teaching hospitals, health systems, clinical enterprises, departments, institutes, affiliates, and faculty practices interact. Learn to recognize where authority, funding, operations, data, and accountability cross organizational boundaries and why those interfaces matter for research administration.

Module 3: Research Administration Models in Academic Medicine

Compare centralized, decentralized, hybrid, departmental, institute-based, clinical, and shared-service research administration models. Evaluate how organizational design affects service delivery, role clarity, escalation, workforce capacity, consistency, accountability, and the ability to support a growing academic health research enterprise.

Module 4: Faculty Practice Plans, Academic Departments & Research Enterprise Funding

Explore how faculty practice structures, academic departments, clinical activity, institutional commitments, effort, sponsored funding, and research support intersect. Focus on the administrative and governance implications of these relationships without becoming a physician-compensation or technical finance course.

Module 5: Academic Medicine Finance, Revenue Streams & Mission Integration

Develop executive-level literacy in the financial ecosystem supporting academic health research. Examine sponsored funding, clinical revenue interfaces, institutional investment, philanthropy, F&A recovery, shared infrastructure, cross-mission resource decisions, and the financial dependencies that influence research growth and sustainability.

Module 6: Research Strategy, Growth & Institutional Competitiveness

Connect research administration to institutional research strategy. Explore portfolio priorities, research growth, faculty recruitment, infrastructure investment, strategic positioning, funding concentration, partnership development, performance indicators, and the decisions required to build sustainable and competitive research capacity.

Module 7: Clinical & Translational Research Infrastructure

Examine the shared capabilities that enable clinical and translational research, including clinical research units, regulatory support, biostatistics, informatics, recruitment, cores, shared facilities, participant-facing services, and translational resources. Learn to identify capacity constraints, dependencies, and institutional friction points.

Module 8: CTSA Programs, Translational Science & Research Acceleration

Use CTSA-type infrastructure as a lens for understanding translational science, research acceleration, workforce development, shared resources, community partnership, and institutional coordination. Focus on the enduring capability model rather than the mechanics of managing a specific grant program.

Module 9: Cancer Centers, Specialized Institutes & Research Networks

Examine the distinctive governance and administrative needs of cancer centers, specialized institutes, centers of excellence, research networks, and matrixed research organizations. Explore shared governance, specialized infrastructure, performance expectations, cross-unit accountability, and the risks created when organizational authority is distributed.

Module 10: Industry-Sponsored Research & Strategic Partnerships in Academic Health Systems

Explore the institutional implications of industry-sponsored research, strategic alliances, commercialization-adjacent partnerships, external collaboration, contracting dependencies, conflict interfaces, data and publication expectations, and shared institutional interests. Emphasize partnership governance and escalation rather than duplicating contract-specialist instruction.

Module 11: Multi-Site, Multi-Entity & Affiliated Research Administration

Navigate research that crosses hospitals, universities, affiliates, institutes, departments, and partner organizations. Examine multi-site and multi-entity responsibilities, legal and financial boundaries, delegation, shared services, data flows, reliance, accountability, and the governance seams where responsibility can become unclear.

Module 12: Research Workforce Development, Faculty Success & Career Infrastructure

Build the people systems that sustain academic health research. Examine research administrator capacity, clinical research professionals, faculty development, trainees, recruitment, retention, career pathways, succession, knowledge transfer, leadership pipelines, and how workforce strategy supports both research growth and institutional resilience.

Module 13: Research Compliance Across Academic Health Enterprises

Understand how research compliance functions interact across complex academic health environments. Examine the interfaces among clinical, human subjects, financial, conflict, data, research integrity, safety, and other oversight functions, with emphasis on ownership, coordination, escalation, evidence, and avoiding gaps between specialized compliance domains.

Module 14: Hospital-University Governance, Shared Accountability & Decision Rights

Address one of the most difficult challenges in academic health research: determining who has authority, who carries risk, who makes the decision, and who must act when responsibility is shared. Examine governance agreements, committees, delegated authority, escalation, shared accountability, and the institutional evidence needed to support defensible decisions.

Module 15: Research Finance, Coverage Analysis & Cross-Entity Billing Risk

Examine how research finance responsibilities can cross schools, hospitals, faculty practices, clinical trial offices, departments, and central administration. Focus on ownership, interfaces, financial handoffs, coverage-analysis dependencies, billing risk, reconciliation, controls, escalation, and the cross-entity conditions that can create financial or compliance exposure.

Module 16: Learning Health Systems, Population Health & Community Partnership

Explore how academic health organizations connect research, care delivery, population health, community partnership, and continuous organizational learning. Examine the administrative and governance conditions that support responsible use of data, evidence generation, community trust, bidirectional learning, and research that improves health-system and public impact.

Module 17: Innovation, Commercialization, Strategic Partnerships & Economic Impact

Examine academic health research as an engine of innovation, partnership, workforce development, commercialization, and regional economic impact. Explore technology-transfer interfaces, industry engagement, innovation ecosystems, strategic partnership models, institutional interests, and the governance needed to pursue opportunity without losing mission or accountability.

Module 18: The Future-State Academic Health Research Enterprise

Integrate the series by designing an academic health research enterprise capable of adapting to changing funding environments, workforce pressures, technology shifts, data and AI interfaces, organizational restructuring, emerging partnership models, resilience challenges, and new institutional expectations. Build a future-state roadmap grounded in mission, governance, evidence, capability, and responsible stewardship.

Explore the Learning Experience

Each module follows the Purple Sheep Institute™ Research Center learning structure:

Instructional Lecture
Engage with focused instruction designed to strengthen professional knowledge and institutional understanding.

Applied Learning
Connect module concepts to institutional context through the governed applied-learning experience for the module.

Knowledge Assessment
Demonstrate understanding of the module’s core concepts and their application within research administration practice.

Applied Learning & Practical Value

The Full Series moves learners beyond passive instruction by connecting enterprise concepts to the institutional environments in which academic health research is administered.

Applied learning is governed at the module level and is designed to support reflection, analysis, professional judgment, and practical application without changing the approved curriculum sequence or substantive learning objectives.

Credential Alignment & Professional Development

This pathway supports continuing education and professional development aligned with:

• Certified Research Administrator (CRA)
• Certified Pre-Award Research Administrator (CPRA)
• Certified Financial Research Administrator (CFRA)
• SOCRA Certified Clinical Research Professional (CCRP) Domains
• Association of Clinical Research Professionals (ACRP) Competencies
• Certified Internal Auditor (CIA) Principles

Learners remain responsible for determining how earned contact hours apply toward certification renewal, licensure, recertification, or professional development requirements.

Completion Information

Modules: 1–18
Contact Hours: 18
Format: Self-Paced
Access Period: 180 Days
Certificate: Awarded Upon Successful Completion

The Full Series consists of all 18 modules of the Academic Health Center Research Administration Series™.

Learners seeking a shorter foundational experience may begin with the Half Series, which consists of Modules 1–6 of this same governed curriculum.

Course completion does not remove access during the active enrollment period. Learners retain access for the duration of their 180-day enrollment period.

Content Currency & Governance

Purple Sheep Institute™ designs its research administration curriculum around enduring principles, institutional capabilities, professional judgment, and applied practice rather than temporary requirements alone.

Curriculum is reviewed through the Institute’s governance process and updated when meaningful changes in regulation, sponsorship, technology, professional practice, or the research environment require governed revision.

Operational requirements, systems, policies, sponsor expectations, and other current details may change. Where current requirements are discussed, learners remain responsible for confirming the requirements applicable to their institution and circumstances when an operational decision is made.

Build Capability Across Your Organization

Academic health research capability depends on coordinated people, systems, governance, infrastructure, and decision-making across the enterprise.

The Academic Health Center Research Administration Series™ can support workforce development, cross-functional learning, institutional alignment, research operations development, governance strengthening, and enterprise learning initiatives across academic health environments.

Organizations seeking deeper institution-specific application may also explore Institutional Labs™, where learning can be connected to institutional systems, organizational interfaces, capability gaps, and improvement priorities.

Institute Reflection

“Academic health research excellence emerges when interconnected missions, people, systems, and responsibilities are governed as one enterprise.”

Purple Sheep Institute™

Continue Your Learning Journey

Continue developing research administration capability through the Clinical & Academic Health Research Pathway™ and other Purple Sheep Institute™ Research Center pathways aligned with your professional responsibilities and institutional goals.

Ready to Strengthen Academic Health Research Administration Capability?

Build the institutional perspective needed to navigate complex academic health research environments and strengthen coordinated research capability across the enterprise.

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