Faculty + Staff

Kathryn Wrench, MBA, CRA, has been a devoted servant leader to higher education for almost 30 years. In 2021, Kathryn was hired as LTU’s inaugural research director, supporting the university’s strategic goal of obtaining Carnegie R2 research status by 2030. LTU is well on its way to that goal, having reached Carnegie Research University status in 2025. Since 2021, LTU’s research support have grown from under $1M to $9M annually. Ms. Wrench assists faculty in proposing sponsor funded projects by finding funding resources and research collaborators, designing and conducting educational workshops, creating policy and procedure in research administration, and managing research development programs. Her experience in research administration and development includes managing large-scale university-wide programs, managing cross-institutional programs, private for-profit, non-profit, and governmental funds, research compliance and security, intellectual property, and financial administration of research funding portfolios of over $250M.

Kathryn’s career includes leadership in post-award financial operations, pre-award research development, and compliance as former director of Sponsored Programs Administration at R1 Wayne State University and former director of Grants, Contracts, and Sponsored Research at R2 Oakland University. Prior to leadership in higher education, Kathryn worked in public accounting as a tax consultant for Deloitte’s International Tax Services and as a Defense Contract Audit Agency (DCAA) auditor. Her professional passion is evidenced in work supporting excellence in research administration. Kathryn is currently a national Peer Reviewer appointed by the Board of the National Council of University Research Administrators (NCURA), a national organization with more than 9,000 individual members from over 1,100 colleges, universities, teaching hospitals, and research institutes in 40 countries. NCURA Peer Reviewers undergo a rigorous process of review of their credential and professional experience qualifying to provide consultation to universities on their operational congruence with professional standards for quality service, compliance, and efficiency, in research administration; fewer than 10 reviewers are appointed by NCURA’s board each year to serve 3-year terms of service.

Kathryn is a Certified Research Administrator (CRA) and possesses an MBA with a concentration in management of organizational change and a bachelor’s degree in accounting, both awarded by Wayne State University. She possesses an associate’s in computer information systems from Henry Ford College.

In 2023, Ms. Wrench was awarded a National Science Foundation grant in collaboration with Dr. Matt Cole and Dr. Jacqueline Stavros, for “Building Research Infrastructure, Networks, and Knowledge (BRINK)”, supporting building research administrative capacity in Michigan’s colleges and universities. BRINK leverages Appreciative Inquiry techniques of strategic engagement in building institutional capacity for research.