shell access to cPanel user

I have a VPS hosting with WHM/cPanel access and I have root SSH access where I need to run commands from time to time. I have cron jobs there which are currently running as root, but what to switch to the user of the public_html (which is 'research', the same user I use for the cPanel account login). the problem with root is (apart from being unsecure, I guess) is daily log files are being generated by root (if not already there), so the user research no longer can append to it, unless it generates the log file before root for that day. Now, in order to change cron jobs to that user, I tried to login using

- research

, but the response is shell access not enabled on that account. now I see the /etc/passwd entry for the user is following:

:x:1003:1005::/home/research:/usr/local/cpanel/bin/noshell

now my question is, is it safe to grant shell access to the cPanel user and use it like that (as the owner of public_html is that user), and if so then how to do that?