Director of Regional Research and Clinical Operations

Mission Statement

Michigan Medicine improves the health of patients, populations and communities through excellence in education, patient care, community service, research and technology development, and through leadership activities in Michigan, nationally and internationally. Our mission is guided by our Strategic Principles and has three critical components; patient care, education and research that together enhance our contribution to society.

Job Summary

The Department of Neurosurgery seeks an Administrative Manager Intermediate to provide strategic, operational, financial, and compliance leadership across the department's research enterprise and regional clinical operations. This role will serve as a key administrative partner to the Chair, Chief Department Administrator, Vice Chair/Director of Research, faculty investigators, clinical leaders, and health system partners.

The position will support the growth, integration, and financial sustainability of the department's research portfolio, including basic/translational research, clinical research, clinical trials, quality initiatives, registries, and outcomes programs. The role is responsible for strengthening research infrastructure, improving compliance processes, supporting faculty productivity, expanding clinical trials, and reducing unfunded research activity.

In addition, this role will provide operational leadership for regional neurosurgical care, serving as a bridge across Ann Arbor, Sparrow, West, Chelsea, Brighton, Northville, and other regional sites. The position will support recruitment, service growth, marketing, clinical integration, operational efficiencies, access improvement, and alignment of neurosurgical services across the region.

This position requires a flexible, service-oriented leader who can manage complex priorities across research, clinical operations, finance, compliance, quality, and strategic projects.

Responsibilities*

Research Strategy, Growth, and Operations

• Lead operational management of the department's research mission across bench research, clinical research, clinical trials, quality, registries, and outcomes programs.
• Support growth in research activity, clinical trials, external funding, publications, and academic impact.
• Work with faculty investigators to remove operational barriers related to hiring, purchasing, space, regulatory readiness, data access, study start-up, and funding.
• Align research activities with departmental priorities, faculty goals, available funding, staffing capacity, and institutional requirements.

Research Administration, Compliance, and Faculty Support

• Oversee and coordinate research administration functions, including pre-award, post-award, grant submissions, sponsor reporting, and project closeout.
• Support faculty and staff compliance with institutional, sponsor, and regulatory requirements.
• Coordinate annual M-Inform updates for faculty and applicable research personnel.
• Manage the annual research laboratory space survey process.
• Support timely completion of annual faculty effort certification for research-related activity.
• Monitor faculty and staff effort alignment to grants, contracts, gifts, discretionary funds, and other funding sources.
• Develop tools, calendars, dashboards, and reminders to ensure timely completion of required compliance activities.
• Maintain audit-ready documentation and support preparation for institutional, sponsor, or regulatory reviews.

Financial Management and Sustainability

• Oversee financial management for the research and quality portfolio, including grants, contracts, gifts, discretionary funds, and sponsored project shortcodes.
• Ensure timely account reconciliation, forecasting, variance review, and financial reporting.
• Develop financial models to support sustainable research operations.
• Monitor funded versus unfunded research activity.
• Partner with leadership and faculty to reduce unfunded research activity, with a goal of keeping unfunded research below 20% of the overall research portfolio.
• Align gift spending with donor intent and strategic priorities.
• Support decisions regarding staffing, project continuation, bridge funding, and resource allocation.
• Develop reports that connect funding, effort, expenditures, research output, clinical trials, and compliance performance.

Quality, Registries, and Outcomes

• Provide operational leadership for quality initiatives, registries, databases, and outcomes programs supporting neurosurgery care.
• Coordinate data capture, reporting, and performance tracking for statewide initiatives, payer collaboratives, and Blue Cross Blue Shield-related programs.
• Partner with clinical and research leaders to translate quality work into research projects, publications, presentations, and improvement initiatives.
• Ensure registry and quality reporting is complete, timely, accurate, and aligned across sites.

Regional Neurosurgical Clinical Operations

• Serve as an operational bridge across Ann Arbor, Sparrow, West, Chelsea, Brighton, Northville, and other regional neurosurgical sites.
• Support regional neurosurgical care integration, service growth, recruitment, onboarding, marketing, and operational alignment.
• Partner with clinical leaders, faculty, APPs, administrators, and regional stakeholders to improve access, patient flow, referral pathways, and care coordination.
• Identify and implement operational efficiencies across regional sites, including clinic templates, scheduling, surgical coordination, referral management, call coverage, staffing models, and care pathways.
• Support faculty and provider recruitment by helping define operational needs, site readiness, onboarding plans, and growth opportunities.
• Work with marketing, communications, and strategy teams to support regional visibility and patient growth.
• Monitor regional clinical performance metrics, including volume, access, referrals, surgical cases, provider utilization, patient experience, and growth trends.
• Support alignment of clinical care, research, education, quality, and clinical trials across regional sites.

People Leadership and Team Development

• Supervise assigned staff across research administration, laboratories, clinical trials, quality, registries, databases, and related operational areas.
• Lead hiring, onboarding, training, coaching, goal setting, performance evaluation, and retention strategies.
• Clarify roles, responsibilities, workflows, and cross-coverage plans.
• Promote a culture of accountability, collaboration, compliance, service, and continuous improvement.
• Work with HR and departmental leadership to address employee relations, performance concerns, corrective action, and workforce planning.
• Support professional development and engagement through regular meetings, training plans, and team communication.

Strategic Projects and Operational Improvement

• Lead or support department-wide strategic projects as assigned by the Chair, Chief Department Administrator, or other senior leaders.
• Manage initiatives across research, clinical operations, education, quality, regional growth, access, recruitment, accreditation readiness, and workflow improvement.
• Develop project plans, timelines, stakeholder maps, dashboards, and success metrics.
• Facilitate workgroups, remove barriers, and drive projects to completion.
• Provide executive-level updates, recommendations, and action plans to departmental leadership.
• Flex responsibilities as needed to address emerging priorities, performance gaps, institutional requests, or time-sensitive operational needs.

Required Qualifications*

• Bachelor's degree or equivalent combination of education and experience.
• Progressively responsible experience in healthcare administration, research administration, clinical operations, academic medicine, or related field.
• Demonstrated experience managing complex operations, projects, teams, or portfolios.
• Experience with budget management, financial reporting, reconciliation, forecasting, or resource planning.
• Strong organizational, analytical, communication, and project management skills.
• Ability to work effectively with faculty, clinicians, staff, administrators, and institutional partners.
• Demonstrated ability to manage competing priorities in a matrixed and fast-paced environment.
• Commitment to compliance, service excellence, continuous improvement, and team development.

Desired Qualifications*

• Master's degree such as MBA, MHA, MPH, MS, or related advanced training.
• Knowledge of Michigan Medicine, Medical School, or University of Michigan policies, systems, and processes.
• Experience with sponsored project administration, including pre-award, post-award, effort management, and sponsor compliance.
• Experience supporting research compliance activities, including M-Inform, effort certification, space surveys, IRB processes, GCP, audit readiness, or regulatory documentation.
• Experience with clinical trials operations, study budgeting, feasibility review, start-up, activation, enrollment tracking, and closeout.
• Experience supporting multi-site clinical operations, regional growth, ambulatory operations, service-line integration, or provider recruitment.
• Experience with quality initiatives, registries, payer collaboratives, outcomes reporting, or statewide clinical improvement programs.
• Experience managing multi-source funding, including grants, contracts, gifts, discretionary funds, and clinical trial accounts.
• Prior direct supervisory experience, including hiring, onboarding, coaching, performance management, and staff development.
• Experience using dashboards, metrics, and data visualization tools such as Tableau, Power BI, Excel, Epic reporting tools, or research administration systems.
• Proven ability to implement process improvements and operational efficiencies.

Why Join Michigan Medicine?

Michigan Medicine is one of the largest health care complexes in the world and has been the site of many groundbreaking medical and technological advancements since the opening of the U-M Medical School in 1850. Michigan Medicine is comprised of over 30,000 employees and our vision is to attract, inspire, and develop outstanding people in medicine, sciences, and healthcare to become one of the world's most distinguished academic health systems.  In some way, great or small, every person here helps to advance this world-class institution. Work at Michigan Medicine and become a victor for the greater good.

What Benefits can you Look Forward to?

• Excellent medical, dental and vision coverage effective on your very first day
• 2:1 Match on retirement savings

Work Schedule

M-F 7-7, variable work hours M-Th in-office and F hybrid

Work Locations

Taubman

Additional Information

This role is expected to balance responsibilities across two major areas:

1. Research, clinical trials, compliance, quality, and financial sustainability
2. Regional neurosurgical clinical operations and service integration

The balance of effort may shift over time based on departmental priorities, faculty needs, research growth, regional expansion, and institutional initiatives. The successful candidate will be comfortable operating in a flexible leadership role that requires both strategic thinking and hands-on execution.

Key Metrics and Success Indicators

The Administrative Manager will develop reporting tools and support measurable improvement in areas such as:

Research and Academic Impact

• Number of active research projects.
• Number of active and enrolling clinical trials.
• Publications, abstracts, presentations, and other scholarly output.
• Grant submissions and submission-to-award rate.
• Total awarded dollars.
• Year-over-year growth in funded research.
• Faculty investigator support and satisfaction.

Financial Sustainability

• Funded versus unfunded research activity.
• Reduction of unfunded research to less than 20% of the overall research portfolio.
• Timely account reconciliation and variance review.
• Accurate effort allocation to appropriate funding sources.
• Appropriate use of gift funds and discretionary funds.
• Financial performance of clinical trials and research programs.

Compliance

• Completion of annual M-Inform updates.
• Completion of annual faculty effort certification.
• Completion and accuracy of annual research lab space survey.
• Timely sponsor and institutional reporting.
• Audit and monitoring findings.
• Corrective action completion.
• Research staff training compliance.

Clinical Trials

• Study start-up cycle time.
• Number of active and enrolling trials.
• Enrollment versus target.
• Time to activation.
• Protocol deviations.
• Closeout timelines.
• Monitoring and audit readiness.

Regional Clinical Operations

• Regional patient volume growth.
• Referral volume and referral conversion.
• Access to new patient appointments.
• Surgical volume and case mix.
• Provider recruitment and onboarding progress.
• Regional site integration milestones.
• Operational efficiency improvements.
• Marketing and outreach impact.

Quality and Outcomes

• Registry data completeness and timeliness.
• On-time external reporting.
• Quality initiative performance.
• Outcomes improvement tied to stroke, spine, and other programs.
• Quality initiatives converted into scholarly output or research activity.

Application Deadline

Job openings are posted for a minimum of seven calendar days. The review and selection process may begin as early as the eighth day after posting. This opening may be removed from posting boards and filled any time after the minimum posting period has ended.

U-M EEO Statement

The University of Michigan is an Equal Opportunity Employer. We are committed to providing an environment of mutual respect where equal employment opportunities are available to all applicants, including protected veterans and individuals with disabilities.