Program Manager

Primary Purpose of Organizational Unit:

Our mission is to improve the health and well-being of North Carolinians and others whom we serve. We accomplish this by providing leadership and excellence in the interrelated areas of patient care, education and research.

Patient care: We promote health and provide superb clinical care while maintaining our strong tradition of reaching underserved populations and reducing health disparities across North Carolina and beyond.

Education: We prepare tomorrow`s healthcare professionals and biomedical researchers from all backgrounds by facilitating learning within innovative and integrated curricula and team-oriented interprofessional education to ensure a highly skilled workforce.

Research: We develop and support a rich array of outstanding health sciences research programs, centers and resources. We provide infrastructure and opportunities for collaboration among disciplines throughout and beyond our university to support outstanding research. We foster programs in the areas of basic, translational, mechanistic and population research.

Position Summary:

The Assistant Research Program Director (ARPD) will be responsible for overseeing functions related to enrollment of human subjects as well as primary and secondary data collection and analysis on studies supported by the Center for Aging and Health. The research unit within the Center includes one clinical research pod who work collaboratively on shared clinical projects and additional staff who conduct non-clinical research activities across multiple initiatives. All staff will report directly to the ARPD or pod lead. The ARPD reports directly to the Center Director. The ARPD is responsible for promoting standardization and best practices across both clinical and non-clinical research functions, managing human resources needs, and collaborating with departmental and school offices to ensure compliance and reporting requirements are met.

Duties Include:

• Manage Clinical and Non-Clinical Research Initiatives: This involves providing direction, guidance, and support to the clinical and non-clinical research teams. The ARPD will ensure staff members operate efficiently, adhere to best practices, and maintain a high level of performance.
• Enrollment of Human Subjects/Data Collection and Analysis: Supervise functions related to human subjects enrollment on research studies conducted at UNC and UNC Health network entity locations. Supervise the collection and analysis of research data. Ensure proper procedures and protocols are followed, coordinate with study teams and investigators and maintain compliance.
• Project and anticipate staffing needs.
• Manage selection, hiring, and training of staff to ensure pods are fully staffed.
• Train, onboard, and supervise research staff.
• Capture metrics as requested by department and school and report metrics to department and school of medicine.
• Ensure studies are compliant with all applicable laws and regulations regarding research with human subjects.
• Develop standard operating procedures for the Center that are compliant with all applicable laws, regulations, and policies, including IRB, FDA, GCP, and HIPAA; as well as with UNC Chapel Hill, UNC Health, and UNC Clinical Research Support Office policies. Ensure SOPs are compliant with all applicable UNC-Chapel Hill AND UNC Health policies on research and compliance, environmental safety and health, privacy, and data security.
• Monitor and meet research study milestones (such as recruitment and data collection).
• Organize various communications, meetings, conference calls. Provide reports to the investigative team.
• Handle and reconcile research participant study payments.
• Modify, maintain, renew IRB and other regulatory documentation as needed.
• The role will involve extensive coordination of work and effort and ensuring effective communications within UNC Chapel Hill, UNC Health network entity locations, and key stakeholders (sponsors, UNC offices, Lead investigators, etc.).

The Lead Investigators will provide overall direction of the projects; however, the ARPD is expected to direct the day-to-day operations and to exercise considerable independent judgment and decision-making to manage the studies and staff.

Minimum Education and Experience Requirements:

Relevant post-Baccalaureate degree required (or foreign degree equivalent); for candidates demonstrating comparable independent research productivity, will accept a relevant Bachelor’s degree (or foreign degree equivalent) and 3 or more years of relevant experience in substitution. May require terminal degree and licensure.

Required Qualifications, Competencies, and Experience:

Individual must have a comprehensive knowledge of research principles, study design, methods of data/information collection and analysis to develop strategies and policies that guide projects and programs.

Knowledge of statistics to interpret complex data and communicate trends and probable outcomes, preferably both qualitative and quantitative.

Candidate must be familiar with quantitative statistical methods including basic statistical comparisons (t-test, chi-squared, etc.) and simple regression techniques (linear, logistic).

Candidate must be familiar with qualitative research methodology. Familiarity with common statistical software packages (SAS or Stata) and qualitative software packages (Atlas.ti, NVivo, etc).

This individual must have the required training/experience in order to plan and design data collection and analysis. Knowledge of quality controls, and report design alternatives is essential.

This individual must be able to develop methods to evaluate and interpret guidelines, and amend estimation methodology and procedures as warranted.

This position must be able to effectively communicate with funding agencies and investigators regarding the research projects. This includes writing research proposals to funding agencies, preparing reports to provide accurate documentation of the research project, data collection and analyses, outcomes.

Preferred Qualifications, Competencies, and Experience:

Master’s or Doctorate degree in research, statistical, or public health related field preferred. Research experience at an academic medical center preferred. Experience working with effective teams.