Tbers,
This is a timely post, given the presentation at today's UUP luncheon.
Mr. James B. Greenberg
Director Teaching, Learning and Technology Center
Milne Library
SUNY College at Oneonta
Oneonta, New York 13820
email: [log in to unmask]
phone: 607-436-2701
fax: 607-436-3081
IM: oneontatltc
"Ignorance is curable, stupidity lasts forever"
Folks:
The posting below offers some excellent advice
for new professors on writing and obtaining
research grants. It is by Karen M. Markin
director of research development at the
University of Rhode Island's research office. The
posting first appeared in Chronicle of Higher
Education career advice column, CATALYST on March
10. 2006.
[http://chronicle.com/jobs/news/2006/03/2006031001c/careers.html].
Copyright © 2006 by The Chronicle of Higher
Education. Reprinted with permission.
FINDING GRANTS - WHERE TO START
By KAREN M. MARKIN
It's officially behind you -- that first frenzied
semester of being an assistant professor. You
have conquered the electronic grade-submission
system and know where to get a decent cup of
coffee. Now it's time to think about career
development. In the academic world, that usually
means finding grants.
Where to begin? It's surprising how many new
assistant professors just don't know. Many feel
under pressure to "know everything" and are
afraid to ask what they fear will seem like
obvious questions about the grant process. As an
experienced grant writer, my goal here is to
offer some basic advice about seeking a grant and
spare you the embarrassment of having to ask.
First find out what services and resources are
available at your institution. During the
whirlwind of welcoming sessions for new faculty
members, you may have been told about campus
offices that assist with external grants. Your
mind may have been focused then on setting up an
e-mail account or getting that all-important
parking sticker. Now is a good time to follow up
on grant services.
There's No Place Like Home
Just about every college or university has an
office, or at least a person, who oversees the
institution's requests for external grants. The
name of that office varies, and is often cryptic,
but you should be able to track it down through
your institution's Web site.
At major research universities, the Web site's
home page usually has a link titled "research."
Follow it. If you are then faced with a list of
offices, start with one that says something like
"sponsored-projects administration" or "sponsored
programs." Some of the information you need may
also be nested in a link to the office of the
vice provost for research.
If you're at a medium-sized institution that
doesn't post a "research" link on its homepage,
try going to an alphabetical list of offices, and
look there for sponsored projects, sponsored
programs, or research administration. And if
you're at a small college, start with the people
on your campus who raise money from private
sources. The office may be called advancement,
development, corporate and foundation relations,
or some variation of those.
Once you've found the correct office, tap into
its services. Most have one or more databases of
grant sources. At large research universities,
such databases are probably available to you from
your office computer. Some of their trade names
are Community of Science; the Illinois Research
Information Service known as IRIS; and the
Sponsored Programs Information Service, or SPIN.
You access those resources the same way that you
would library databases for journal articles,
selecting values for a fixed set of criteria. If
you used online reference databases well enough
to get through graduate school, you can use a
grant database.
If your institution is small and does not
subscribe to databases listing sources of grant
money, ask for help from the campus fund-raising
office. It may have a database of foundation
grants that it can search for you.
You can search for federal financing
opportunities through Grants.gov. That service
bills itself as "the single access point for over
1,000 grant programs offered by all federal
grant-making agencies."
Remember when you're searching it that -- unlike
the subscription databases, which are tailored to
the academic community -- Grants.gov covers the
breadth of federal funding. So, in addition to
grants for scientific research, you will come
across grants to states for
emergency-preparedness training and similar
programs that are not likely to interest you.
The Web site for your institution's
sponsored-programs office may provide the answers
to a lot of your questions about grant-writing
fundamentals. Most will list the names of key
contacts and their areas of responsibility. Some
include a checklist of the steps to take in
preparing a proposal at your institution.
If your institution is small and doesn't offer
extensive online help, don't hesitate to utilize
the online resources of large research
universities. Start with the flagship public
university in your state. It can link you to
online proposal-writing help, some of which is
provided by the grant agencies themselves. That
type of advice is typically categorized under
"proposal development." The Web sites of major
universities also have bibliographies of
publications about proposal writing.
Financial Aid
The next step is to track down the "starter
grants" for new faculty members at your
institution. Universities usually have seed money
to help newcomers get their research under way.
You might, for example, get money from your
institution to collect pilot data in the summer
so you can submit a grant proposal to a federal
agency in the fall. Try asking the provost's
office or your sponsored-programs office for
information about the availability of starter
grants.
You may also be able to scrape together money for
a trip to Washington to meet with a program
officer to discuss a proposal idea. Your dean's
office, sponsored-programs office, or department
head may have travel money for such trips.
Don't be afraid to ask, and don't be apologetic,
even if an office doesn't have a formal program
for making such grants. Many people are able to
obtain money simply by asking. Some go so far as
to act entitled to such resources, but there's a
fine line between assertiveness and arrogance.
The latter will not encourage people to go out of
their way to help you.
Many foundations and agencies offer grants
specifically for beginning professors. If you're
searching a grant database, the criteria under
"applicant type" probably include "new faculty
member" as an option.
At the federal level, new faculty members have a few grant possibilities:
* The National Institutes of Health has a
series of career-development awards called "K
Awards," including the Career Transition Award
(code-named the K 22). The NIH also recently
announced a program offering Pathway to
Independence awards to help postdocs make the
transition to independent research careers. The
NIH Web site has a Career Award Wizard to help
investigators choose among the agency's
career-development awards.
* The National Science Foundation also has
a program for new investigators, the Faculty
Early Career Development program, known as Career.
* Some private foundations also have
programs for new scientists. Examples include the
Camille and Henry Dreyfus Foundation, which
offers grants to new faculty members in the
chemical sciences, and the Alfred P. Sloan
Foundation, which supports new professors in a
variety of scientific disciplines.
Breaking Away
It's time to start separating from your
dissertation adviser and developing supportive
relationships with people where you work.
An experienced chemistry professor I spoke with
warned that new faculty members who get a degree
from a top graduate program and take a job at a
smaller institution will need to learn how things
operate at their new college. That is something
your adviser at Big Bucks U., with her retinue of
research assistants and reliable clerical
support, cannot help you with.
Chat with faculty members in your department to
figure out how to get things done. Don't
hibernate in your office or your lab, dividing
your time between class preparation and
manuscript writing, thinking that dutiful
diligence will lead to tenure. Having
conversations with other professors to learn the
ropes is just as important to your survival as
teaching and research. Through those chats, you
may also find people on campus with similar
interests with whom you might collaborate on
future projects.
It helps to have a mentor, whether you actually
use that term or not, to help you decide which
grants to seek and how to navigate the
bureaucratic shoals that lurk in every
administrative office. A successful senior
colleague can tell you what the expectations are
at your new institution and how to meet them.
For example, it's unrealistic to think you will
generate a major program of research in your
first year. Find out what is considered
realistic, and allow others to help you achieve
it.
Be aware that many federal agencies are dealing
with flat budgets, so it really is more
competitive today to get a grant than it was when
your major professor and the full professors in
your new department were starting out.
A good mentor also can steer you away from
projects that aren't likely to be a good use of
your time. For example, when you're an assistant
professor, it's not wise to apply for a major
equipment grant, unless it specifically focuses
on new faculty members. Agencies finance requests
for major equipment that will be used by many
students and professors, possibly even those from
other institutions. As a newcomer, you will have
few contacts, making it difficult to convincingly
argue that you have a critical mass of users.
Also, if you are untenured, grant agencies will
be leery of paying for equipment whose champion
may not be around in several years. If you need
equipment, consider serving as a co-investigator
on a multiuser instrumentation grant, leaving the
leadership role to someone more experienced.
Similarly, new faculty members should steer away
from serving as a principal investigator on major
multi-investigator collaborations. Those projects
thrive on long-standing relationships among
researchers, and you haven't been in the business
long enough to develop them. They also benefit
from the authority and respect that an
accomplished senior investigator can command.
Establish a track record before taking on a
multi-investigator project.
Don't be afraid to seek advice from your
departmental colleagues. Remember, everyone wants
you to succeed, from the secretary who schedules
search-committee appointments to the faculty
member who drove you to and from the airport. By
helping you, they can spare themselves the work
of hiring another assistant professor.
Karen M. Markin is director of research
development at the University of Rhode Island's
research office.
Copyright © 2006 by The Chronicle of Higher Education
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