UMN Associate Vice President for Research Administration Pamela Webb Announces Retirement

Pamela Webb

Longtime Associate Vice President for Research Administration Pamela Webb has announced her retirement from the University of Minnesota. At the time of her retirement in February 2025, Webb will have served the University for 18 years and will leave a tremendous legacy of leadership and significant contributions on all levels of our institution.

At the UMN, Webb is responsible for pre-award and post-award nonfinancial services supporting more than $1 billion in research awards annually, as well as negotiation of facilities and administrative rates, effort reporting, and research policy and education. Webb’s lifelong commitment to helping others understand the regulatory environment resulted in her launching the annual Sponsored Projects Symposium, a one-day conference attended by 450 administrators every year, and creating the SPECTRUM certificated training program graduating more than 180 specially skilled research administrators to date. Webb also reorganized SPA to better foster relationships between departments and SPA staff and to create a variety of professional development opportunities, including a Signature Authority Delegation course for senior staff and the reclassification of more than 30 SPA grant and contract officers that upgraded their salaries and significantly increased retention. And in April 2024, SPA launched MN-GEMS, a new grants management system that replaced the UMN's 25-year-old custom grants management system, which was developed in 1998. The development and successful launch of MN-GEMS was many years in the making and would not have been possible without Webb's leadership.

Webb has been involved in research administration for 40 years, including 12 years at the University of California-Los Angeles as well as UC Santa Barbara, Northwestern University, and Stanford before joining the University of Minnesota in 2007. Webb is active nationally in organizations dedicated to improving efficiency in the regulatory environment, including: serving in multiple roles (including board member and board chair) for the Council on Government Relations (COGR); being named by NSF to their Business Operations Advisory Committee, finishing her six-year appointment as co-chair of this national advisory committee; serving many years on the Federal Demonstration Partnership (FDP) Executive Committee and, more recently, as co-chair of the FDP Foreign Influence Working Group; and serving as a national officer of the National Council of University Research Administrators (NCURA), ultimately receiving NCURA's Outstanding Achievement in Research Administration Award in 2016, the highest honor in her field.

The Research and Innovation Office will conduct a national search for this critical leadership position. We will share more information in the coming weeks as the timeline for the search is finalized.