Tricia Callahan

Number of Years in Research Administration: 23

Institutions: Emory University, Colorado State University, Miami University, Western Kentucky University, University of Louisville

Tricia Callahan is the Interim Director for Strategic Operations and Research Training at Emory University in Atlanta, GA. As part of the senior leadership team in the Office of Research Administration, Tricia is responsible for analyzing training needs, developing curriculum, and delivering courses related to administrative functions, utilization of system applications, and general industry knowledge.

Prior to her role at Emory, Tricia was the Senior Research Education & Information Officer at Colorado State University in Fort Collins, CO. At CSU, she led a training team dedicated to the analysis, development, design, implementation, and evaluation of campus training initiatives related to sponsored projects administration, including fiscal and regulatory compliance.

Before transitioning into training and strategic operations, Tricia was the Director of Proposal Development at Miami University in Oxford, OH, and the Assistant Director of Sponsored Programs at Western Kentucky University in Bowling Green, KY. In her roles, she was responsible for proposal preparation, budget development, proposal submission, award acceptance and negotiation, and subaward preparation and oversight. Additionally, she provided oversight for WKU’s internal programs for seed funding, managing pre-and post-award activities.

Over the course of her career, Tricia has worked extensively with faculty, staff, students, and senior leadership keeping abreast of policy changes impacting research administration operations. Additionally, she has focused on improving internal efficiencies and streamlining processes in research administration, such as assisting in university-wide software implementation for system-to-system proposal routing, submission, and reporting.

Tricia received her B.A. in Psychology from Miami University and her M.A. in Experimental Psychology from the University of Louisville, where she taught as an adjunct instructor in the Department of Psychology and in the Kent School of Social Work. It was at the University of Louisville where she began her career in research administration in 1998, providing pre-award support for the Speed School of Engineering and the School of Medicine.

Tricia has been an active member of the National Council of University Research Administrators (NCURA) since 1999. Since then, she has regularly served as a presenter and co-presenter on workshops and concurrent sessions at regional, national, and international levels. Additionally, Tricia has led numerous discussion groups and has served on regional boards and program committees for regional and national conferences. In 2004, Tricia took part in the second annual Leadership Development Institute and is a 2016 graduate of the NCURA Executive Leadership Program.

Tricia is currently the Chair of the Select Committee for Peer Review and serves as a Peer Reviewer and Traveling Workshop Faculty for NCURA’s Fundamentals of Sponsored Projects Administration. She is a recipient of a 2015 NCURA Global Fellowship to the University of Luxembourg and served as a Eurasia Foundation Special Exchange Participant to Russia in 2016. Tricia was the leadership chapter editor of NCURA’s “Sponsored Research Administration: A Guide to Effective Strategies and Recommended Practices” and co-chair of the NCURA Global Collaborate Community. She has served on three Presidential Task forces and is a former at-Large Member of the NCURA Board of Directors. In 2020, Tricia received NCURA’s Julia Jacobson Distinguished Service Award.

Tricia Callahan

Tricia Callahan

Peer Reviewers