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Beth Seaton

 Number of Years in Research Administration: 30

Institutions: Texas A&M University, Western Illinois University, Northwestern University

 

Beth Seaton has been employed in various areas of research administration for the past 30 years. She is currently working as a Research Administration Consultant.  Before deciding to pursue consulting, she served as the Director of Sponsored Projects for the University of Illinois-Chicago overseeing a staff of 25+ employees in both pre- and non-financial post-awards areas with a portfolio of $350+ million in awards annually.  Prior to that she served as Director Research Administration for the McCormick School of Engineering and Applied Science at Northwestern University in Evanston, Illinois where she supervised a staff of 12 individuals and, together with her staff, was responsible for the administrative management of hundreds of sponsored awards annually.  Beth was the Director of Sponsored Projects at Western Illinois University (WIU), a predominantly undergraduate institution for many years.   As director, she advised the university administration on all aspects of sponsored research including regulation interpretation and policy implementation.  She served as the chief university administrator for proposal review, approval, and submission; implementation of compliance policies and training; and, to some extent, intellectual property and technology transfer issues.  Beth was instrumental in ensuring that WIU developed proper policies and procedures as a recipient of federal funds.  Specifically, she developed the institutional policies for human subjects in research, responsible conduct of research, conflict of interest, and research misconduct.  She was a member of the Institutional Review Board (IRB) for 16 years.    While at WIU, Beth supervised the entire pre-award function and all of the non-financial post-award activity in addition to the federal compliance area.  She was involved in all of the electronic research administration transitions and trainings for that institution.

 

Beth began her career in research administration at Texas A&M where she gained a wealth of grants management experience from the post award side and proposal preparation and budgeting on the pre-award side.  At Texas A&M she was responsible for a portfolio of projects from proposal to close-out.

  

Beth has been an active member of NCURA since 1987.  She has served that organization as a faculty member for NCURA’s Fundamentals of Sponsored Projects Administration.   She conducted grant writing workshops at the request of the United States Department of Education (USDE) Fund for the Improvement of Postsecondary Education (FIPSE) for two of their international conferences in Washington, D.C. and has served as a proposal reviewer for USDE FIPSE and GEAR UP programs, and for the Illinois Board of Higher Education.  She was appointed by the Illinois Deputy Governor of Education to the Co-Chair the Task Force on State Contract Reform.  In 2008 Beth was recognized for distinguish service to the Midwest region of NCURA. In 2011 she received the same award from the national organization and in 2010 she was awarded the European Association of Research Managers and Administrators/National Council of University Research Administrators International Research Management Fellowship which took her to Lisbon, Portugal to study under her host institution, the Instituto Gulbenkian de Ciencia.  She has bachelor's and master's degrees in economics. 

 
 
NCURA Peer Program engagements are priced as a flat fee, scaled to the sponsored programs total active award dollars in the last fiscal year, regardless of type of Peer Program engagement.