As the Executive Associate Dean of Research and Operations, Hollie Raynor and her team in the Office of Research and External Funding (OREF) provide the faculty in the College of Education, Health, and Human Sciences with support in developing their scholarship skills and proposals to procure external funds for scholarship projects.
“My role is to help build infrastructure for the office and the college as it relates to scholarship and external funding related to this scholarship,” said Raynor. “When I started my position in the college, even in an interim role, I saw the opportunity to create clearer pathways to provide support for our faculty here to help them in achieving their professional goals around their scholarship.”
The OREF team facilitates professional development activities for faculty, staff, and graduate students pursuing external funding. The team also provides individualized, high-quality service in all aspects of proposal development for federal, state, and private funding.
In the 2023 fiscal year, OREF was able to assist 57% of the college’s faculty in receiving $22 million in new external grants, with the college’s faculty and staff receiving a total of $57.2 million in active funded projects.
Under Raynor’s leadership, the college has had the opportunity to create and expand partnerships with local and national organizations. Recently, the college was able to celebrate the growing partnership with Cherokee Health Systems (CHS) through REACCH — Research and Education Aligned for Clinical and Community Health.
Launched in 2022, REACCH focuses on leveraging the energies and resources of UT and CHS to better meet the health needs of Tennesseans through three foundational characteristics:
- Mutually beneficial and reciprocal collaborations with shared leadership
- Interdisciplinary endeavors that leverage the expertise of teams from multiple disciplines
- A consistent commitment to equitable access and opportunity in pursuit of health equity
“REACCH is an academic-community health practice collaboration that aims to advance the well-being of individuals, families, and communities across Tennessee through teaching, research, and clinical practice,” said Raynor.
Hired as the Associate Dean of Research in 2020, Raynor has always had a passion for helping others. That passion is what brought her into the field of nutrition and clinical psychology and her role in the college administration. Originally planning to pursue music and performing as an undergraduate student, she discovered her interest in nutrition from an entry-level course. She credits that introductory course for her interest in the field.
“I took a basic nutrition class and fell in love with the subject,” said Raynor. “I started to understand how diet could impact your overall well-being.”
From there, she pursued dietetics, eventually gaining additional interest in clinical psychology. She goes on to explain the importance of foundational courses and how those classes can be the jumping-off point for students to find a pathway to their careers, just as she found hers.
As a researcher, Raynor’s focus is lifestyle interventions, which helps people develop healthy eating and activity patterns, for child and adult obesity treatment, has published over 170 peer-reviewed articles, and has received funding from the National Institutes of Health, American Diabetes Association, Academy of Nutrition and Dietetics Foundation, and Weight Watcher’s, Int, for her research.
Recently, she was awarded a three-million dollar grant with the National Institutes of Health (NIH) that will focus on biobehavioral nutrition, behaviors that have a physiological effect.
“This new study will focus on chrono-nutrition, which is a new area of study in nutrition,” said Raynor. “Basically, we know think that when we eat, not just what we eat, is an important factor in health. This study will be the largest, long-term study in the field looking at if how energy intake is distributed in the day is important for health. We think that eating a larger breakfast and a smaller dinner may be important.”
Raynor continues to have an impact not only in her chosen field of study but also on the research ventures across departments within the college. By assisting faculty in achieving their scholarship goals, she and her team make an impact on research that spans a wide variety of topics.