Susan A. Parker has been with RLE for five of her twenty years at MIT and has a total of 35 years of research administration experience at both the departmental and central office levels. She received her B.A. from the University of Massachusetts, and has continued her education with coursework in Management, Staff and Organizational Development, Project Management, and Sponsored Research Administration. She is a member of the National Council of University of Research Administrators, having served as a Program Committee member and Panel Moderator. She was a member of the MIT administrative group that worked on development of OSP’s STARweb (Specialized Training for Administrators of Research).
Susan was previously President of the University Staff Association at the University of Massachusetts, and was a member of the MTA Higher Education Leadership Council, and Chairman of the Education Committee, developing and leading various training programs. She was also President of the Pioneer Valley Alumni Club, responsible for membership and program development.
Her RLE responsibilities are for Post-Award Administration of assigned faculty research portfolios, including but not limited to the following: financial review and control, budget forecasting, major program financial management, issuance and oversight of sub-awards and fabricated equipment accounts, management of cost-sharing and F&A under-recovery, review of personnel distributions, providing counsel to principal investigators on issues of compliance, allowability, and allocability, coordination of fulfillment of sponsor reporting requirements and account close-outs, preparation of materials for audits, and interacting with faculty, staff, central MIT administrative offices, sponsors, etc. on issues spanning a wide range of complex research and financial administration topics.
