As a doctoral candidate at Lehigh University’s College of Health (COH), Aika Aluc has expertise as a researcher in the systems and structural conditions inside maternal child health and maternal child health outcomes, with a focus on inequities affecting Black women and other systemically marginalized communities. Her understanding of the research enterprise is about to become even more comprehensive.
Aluc is the first COH student to participate in Lehigh’s GRANTED: Pathways for Graduate Students into the Research Enterprise, a program funded by the National Science Foundation (NSF). This program offers paid graduate assistantship and internship opportunities for senior doctoral students that provides experience into research development and administration as a career pathway. She is one of five Lehigh students in this year’s cohort.
According to Kate Bullard, Ph.D., Lehigh’s senior director of research development, the goal is to build capacity and develop a stronger, better-trained workforce in key areas of the research enterprise and ultimately increase access to federal funding. “The idea is to provide a training program for advanced doctoral students who already have a real understanding of research, but might not know there’s a whole other world behind it,” she said.
That world includes research administration — which supports faculty and staff in the process of securing and managing funding for sponsored projects — and research development, which supports the strategy and growth of university research. During her assistantship, Aluc will work in Lehigh’s Office of Research Development and the Office of Research and Sponsored Programs. She will also have the opportunity to intern in the research office of a local college or university, and the funding covers membership in a professional development organization and conference travel.
Professionally, Aluc has worked in policy and strategy roles, involving funding alignments, partnerships, proposal development and policy strategy. “Because I’ve spent my career around research and conducting research, it’s an opportunity to step inside the enterprise to understand how research is actually built, funded and sustained,” she said. “It feels quite parallel to my research.”
“This experience really made me more increasingly curious about how the research itself is shaped, how we position ideas, how we fund them and how we advance them in institutions,” she shared. “This assistantship felt like a natural next step to better understand that infrastructure from inside.”
Fathima Wakeel, associate professor in the department of population health, is Aluc’s doctoral advisor, and she will continue to mentor her in the program. She shared that Aluc already brings valuable expertise as a reviewer for the Institutional Review Board (IRB), and that this program is a great fit for her to learn about the back end of the research enterprise.
Aluc believes that research does not exist in a vacuum and said there are so many layers to implementing a research project, noting the impact of funding structures, political climate, institutional priorities and data. “What excites me with this program is it makes the invisible work behind research visible,” she said.
Reflecting on her own experience, Wakeel shared she did not fully understand the nuances of research infrastructure when she completed her doctoral degree — a gap that many students still face.
“I’m really happy that our students have this opportunity,” Wakeel said. “I want to thank Kate for applying for this NSF opportunity to give our students the chance to get this experience.”
“Most doctoral training programs focus on producing knowledge, but this really gives you the opportunity to learn in a different way and to gain insight into how the work is actually supported, funded and scaled,” Aluc added. “That’s an important nugget that can complement whatever career you choose.”
As an R1 research institution, Lehigh operates at the highest level of research activity, making programs like GRANTED especially valuable for building the infrastructure and expertise that support that work. Heather Messina, Ph.D., the COH’s associate director of research administration, noted that many individuals find their way into the field from other areas of academia, and that programs like this help make it a more visible and intentional pathway.
