Clinical Research Coordinator III

Vanderbilt University Medical Center; Nashville (TN); Hybrid; USD 65,000 - 95,000; Full time

Job summary

The We Grow Healthy Center at Monroe Carrel Jr. Children’s Hospital at Vanderbilt is recruiting an experienced research coordinator to lead a multi-site clinical trial focused on improving child and family health.

You will shape study operations, support collaborating sites, and contribute to a broader portfolio of community-engaged research. You will work in a hybrid setting with on-site work at Vanderbilt Children’s Hospital as needed, collaborating with a dedicated team across the pediatrics

Qualifications

• Bachelor’s degree or equivalent experience required.
• At least 3 years of research experience; 5+ years preferred.
• Experience with IRBs and regulatory processes.
• Experience with pediatric populations is preferred.
• Strong organizational, communication, and problem-solving skills.

Responsibilities

• Lead a multi-site clinical trial and oversee day-to-day operations.
• Serve as central contact for investigators, site teams, and collaborators.
• Plan, support and attend investigator and steering committee meetings.
• Maintain protocol adherence and regulatory compliance across sites.
• Oversee REDCap database development and data quality checks.
• Supervise research staff and mentor team; support grant materials.

Skills

IRB experience

Pediatric research

Leadership ability

Independent work

Communication skills

Problem solving

Education

Bachelor’s degree

Tools

REDCap

Job description

Discover Vanderbilt University Medical Center : Located in Nashville, Tennessee, and operating at a global crossroads of teaching, discovery, and patient care, VUMC is a community of individuals who come to work each day with the simple aim of changing the world. It is a place where your expertise will be valued, your knowledge expanded, and your abilities challenged. Vanderbilt Health is committed to an environment where everyone has the chance to thrive and where your uniqueness is sought and celebrated. It is a place where employees know they are part of something that is bigger than themselves, take exceptional pride in their work and never settle for what was good enough yesterday. Vanderbilt’s mission is to advance health and wellness through preeminent programs in patient care, education, and research.

Organization

General Pediatrics

Job Summary

The We Grow Healthy Center at Monroe Carrel Jr. Children’s Hospital at Vanderbilt is recruiting an experienced, highly motivated research coordinator to take a leading role in a multi-site clinical trial (DOSE Trial; NCT06654323) focused on improving child and family health.
This role will support a program of research focused on developing, implementing, and evaluating practical, evidence-based interventions that promote healthy behaviors and prevent chronic disease. The Center’s work emphasizes real-world application, family-centered approaches, and sustainable programs that help children and caregivers build healthy habits and long-term well-being.
Learn more: https://pediatrics.vumc.org/we-grow-healthy-center
In this position, you will serve in a leadership role on a multi-site study—helping to shape study operations, support collaborating sites, and contribute to a broader portfolio of impactful, community-engaged research.

What Makes This Role Different

• Leadership: Serve as the operational lead for a multi-site clinical trial
• Autonomy with support: High independence alongside close collaboration with faculty and senior staff
• Impact: Work directly connected to improving child and family health in real-world settings
• Growth: Opportunities to contribute to manuscripts, grants, and cross-project collaborations

What You’ll Do

• Lead a multi-site clinical trial
• Oversee day-to-day operations across participating sites
• Serve as the central point of contact for investigators, site teams, and collaborators
• Help sites navigate challenges and stay on track with study milestones
• Plan and support investigator and steering committee meetings
• Shape systems and ensure rigor
• Lead IRB submissions, amendments, continuing reviews, and safety reporting
• Maintain and refine study protocols and manuals of operations
• Ensure protocol adherence and regulatory compliance across sites
• Oversee data and study infrastructure
• Oversee REDCap database development and ongoing improvements
• Train staff on data collection procedures and best practices
• Conduct routine data quality checks
• Coordinate closely with biostatistics collaborators
• Support and mentor a growing team
• Supervise research staff, coordinators, and trainees
• Lead onboarding, training, and ongoing development
• Foster a collaborative, thoughtful, and supportive team culture
• Oversee recruitment and consent workflows
• Build relationships with participating families and community partners
• Support culturally responsive communication (Spanish language skills are a plus)
• Contribute to manuscripts, abstracts, and progress reports
• Assist with grant-related materials
• Engage in cross-project collaborations across the research group

Required Qualifications

• Bachelor’s degree (or equivalent experience)
• At least 3 years of research experience (5+ years preferred)
• Experience working with IRBs and regulatory processes
• Experience working with pediatric populations
• Strong organizational, communication, and problem-solving skills
• Ability to work independently while also leading and supporting a team

You will work Monday through Friday during traditional daytime business hours, with flexibility being essential. This role follows a hybrid remote schedule, and when on-site, you will be based at Vanderbilt Children’s Hospital.

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DEPARTMENT SUMMARY

The Department of Pediatrics at VUMC is one of the largest departments within the medical center and we are proud to be home to some 460 primary faculty, 270 community-based volunteer faculty, 82 clinical fellows, 127 residents, and over 300 administrative and research staff. The Department is rooted in a rich history of commitment to excellence in research, education, and patient care. Our faculty, clinicians, fellows, and trainees represent the very best of academic medicine – extraordinary people doing incredible things to advance the care for children in Middle Tennessee, across the nation, and throughout the world. The result is a Department which reaches far beyond the walls of our hospital to provide high-quality patient care, to train the next generation of leaders in pediatric medicine, and to advance our knowledge of important conditions that affect vulnerable infants and children through world class research. For more information, please visit https://pediatrics.vumc.org/message-chair.

KEY RESPONSIBILITIES

• Lead daily study operations; coordinate activities across multiple clinical sites
• Serve as the central communication point between investigators, site teams, and collaborators
• Facilitate steering committee and investigator meetings
• Troubleshoot site challenges and ensure milestone completion.
• Prepare and oversee IRB submissions, amendments, continuing reviews, and adverse event reporting
• Maintain protocol adherence across all sites
• Update manuals of operations and ensure compliance with institutional and federal regulations.
• Oversee REDCap database development and maintenance
  Train staff in data entry procedures
• Conduct routine data quality checks
• Coordinate with biostatistics teams
• Supervise research assistants, coordinators, and interns
• Conduct onboarding, training, and performance feedback
• Promote a collaborative team culture
• Ensure strong staff performance across all study tasks
• Oversee recruitment and consent workflows
• Maintain relationships with participating families and community partners
• Support culturally responsive communication (Spanish language skills preferred).
• Assist with progress reports, manuscripts, abstracts, and grant-related materials
• Contribute to cross-project collaborations within the research group.

TECHNICAL CAPABILITIES

TECHNICAL CAPABILITIES Communication (Advanced): Clearly, effectively and respectfully communicates to employees or customers. Project Coordination (Advanced): Reviews specific project related documents for completeness and accuracy and ensures project status reports are received, when due, from project managers for all approved projects. Provides administrative and logistics support for various project meetings, training, workshops and facilitated sessions. Coordinates and tracks all work requests to ensure on time project delivery. Keeps project plans updated and ensures key milestones and dependencies are understood. Responsible for record keeping for project meetings such as issues logs, gap analysis sheets, meeting minutes, making copies, team event planning and execution, team travel, on-boarding activities for contractors or consultants, set up and maintenance of project repositories. Study Design & Conduct (Advanced): Applies qualitative and quantitative research methods to perform preparatory, regulatory, and analytic tasking within the life cycle of a study. Clinical Research (Advanced): Knows what job-related resources are available throughout the company. Prepares final reports and manuscripts for publication. Coordinates with an ethics committee, which safeguards the rights, safety and wellbeing of all trial subjects. Can quickly sort through volumes of information to get the right answer. Has a working knowledge of most of the department’s information resources. Is a respected clinical research analyst within the company. People Management (Intermediate): Successfully resolves conflicts and disciplinary problems. Provides counseling and career development planning to subordinates. Constructively gives timely positive and negative feedback, confronting individual performance problems in a professional and sensitive manner. Aware of the values, abilities and needs of others. Demonstrates the ability to create a positive work climate, establishing a feeling of partnership and empowering others. Has set, coached and assessed the assignment objectives of subordinates. Practices and rewards behaviors supportive of company values.

Our Academic Enterprise

Our Academic Enterprise is one of the nation’s longest serving and most prestigious academic medical centers. Through its historic bond with Vanderbilt University and integral role in the School of Medicine, Vanderbilt Health cultivates distinguished research and educational programs to advance a clinical enterprise that provides compassionate and personalized care and support for millions of patients and family members each year.

World-leading academic departments and comprehensive centers of excellence pursue scientific discoveries and transformational educational and clinical advances across the entire spectrum of health and disease.

Aligning with Vanderbilt Health's Strategic Directions, the Office of Research provides shared research resources, administrative expertise and professional guidance to enable the trans-disciplinary environment and highly collaborative culture that advances discovery and training for all the research faculty, trainees, students and staff.

Core Accountabilities

Organizational Impact: Independently delivers on objectives with understanding of how they impact the results of own area/team and other related teams. Problem Solving/ Complexity of work: Utilizes multiple sources of data to analyze and resolve complex problems; may take a new perspective on existing solution. Breadth of Knowledge: Has advanced knowledge within a professional area and basic knowledge across related areas. Team Interaction: Acts as a go-to resource for colleagues with less experience; may lead small project teams.

Core Capabilities

• Supporting Colleagues:
• Develops Self and Others: Invests time, energy, and enthusiasm in developing self/others to help improve performance e and gain knowledge in new areas.
• Builds and Maintains Relationships: Maintains regular contact with key colleagues and stakeholders using formal and informal opportunities to expand and strengthen relationships.
• Communicates Effectively: Recognizes group interactions and modifies one’s own communication style to suit different situations and audiences.
• Delivering Excellent Services: Serves Others with Compassion: Seeks to understand current and future needs of relevant stakeholders and customizes services to better address them.
• Solves Complex Problems: Approaches problems from different angles; Identifies new possibilities to interpret opportunities and develop concrete solutions.
• Offers Meaningful Advice and Support: Provides ongoing support and coaching in a constructive manner to increase employees’ effectiveness.
• Ensuring High Quality: Performs Excellent Work: Engages regularly in formal and informal dialogue about quality; directly addresses quality issues promptly.
• Ensures Continuous Improvement: Applies various learning experiences by looking beyond symptoms to uncover underlying causes of problems and identifies ways to resolve them.
• Fulfills Safety and Regulatory Requirements: Understands all aspects of the providing a safe environment and performs routine safety checks to prevent safety hazards from occurring.
• Managing Resources Effectively: Demonstrates Accountability: Demonstrates a sense of ownership, focusing on and driving critical issues to closure.
• Stewards Organizational Resources: Applies understanding of the departmental work to effectively manage resources for a department/area.
• Makes Data Driven Decisions: Demonstrates strong understanding of the information or data to identify and elevate opportunities.