The NORDP Professional Development committee is offering free webinars; Webinars are free and open to NORDP members and those interested in learning more about the Research Development Profession.

Registration is now available.

Many research development professionals face nearly constant stress due to our repeated work on extremely complex projects conducted under significant deadline pressure. Couple these work responsibilities with personality traits such as being “helpers” or having difficulty saying “no”, and with the demands of life outside of work, and it’s clear that Research Development Professionals are likely to experience chronic stress and be prone to burnout. The purpose of this webinar is to understand contributors to stress and burnout, explore a robust “tool-kit” for reducing stress and preventing burnout as Research Development professionals, and enable attendees to begin to establish a specific plan of action to reassign or reduce their own stressors. Because stress reduction for the most severely affected among us will be an iterative, long-term activity, links to a variety of additional resources will be provided for further individual work.

Joanna Downer founded the Duke University School of Medicine’s Office of Research Development in 2009, and in September 2015 was promoted to Associate Dean for Research Development. From 2009-2011, Joanna was an office of one, balancing unrelated responsibilities with facilitating the development of complex research grants led by any School of Medicine faculty member. Over the years and with the School’s support, she has expanded the office’s staff and services. Now the office of four full-time professionals provides research development and consulting services for both complex and individual investigator grants, and Joanna offers workshops in effective communication and grant writing, primarily at Duke. Since early 2013, she has been working steadfastly to reduce her stress, remove her stressors, and prevent burnout.

Before launching Duke School of Medicine’s Research Development effort, Joanna worked in science writing & media relations, first at Duke Medicine and then at Johns Hopkins Medicine. At Duke, she covered basic and clinical cancer research, and at Hopkins she covered the biomedical sciences, genetic medicine, and cell engineering. She also has extensive experience in scientific editing. Joanna holds an MA and PhD in nuclear chemistry from Washington University in St. Louis. While in graduate school, she was a Mass Media Fellow of the American Association for the Advancement of Science, placed at Time Magazine in Washington, DC. Joanna also holds a BS with Honors in chemistry from Carnegie Mellon University in Pittsburgh, PA.

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