April 30, 2012

1. Types of Communication Engineering Students Need to Master&Overview of Proposal Process and Outline for Final Exam April 30, 2012

2. Oral Communication • Elevator speeches • Interviews (for grad school, employment) • Presentations (15-min and 1-hour long) • As part of grad school interviews • As part of employment interviews • Conferences • Site visits for large grants

3. Written Communication • E-mail • Group reports • Resumes • Peer-reviewed journal articles (including abstracts) • Proposals • Technical documentation, specifications • Poster presentations • (Helping your PIO with) press releases • Web content • Even…blogs, Facebook, Twitter…

4. In the Beginning • Find appropriate funding program. • Read the request for applications very carefully! • Check number of likely awards and likely award amount. • Study the review criteria. • Make sure it’s a good fit for your ideas. • Respond specifically to that request. • Compliance is a big part of winning an award. • Request copies (from colleagues) of winning proposals for the agency in question. • Ask for the reviews. • Study structure, content, tone. • If program is ongoing, study awards already made (to avoid duplicating topics and to see where your ideas might fit). • If you can find the right program, keep looking… Citation: Bourne PE, Chalupa LM (2006) Ten Simple Rules for Getting Grants. PLoS Comput Biol 2(2): e12. doi:10.1371/journal.pcbi.0020012; this is linked on my website.

5. Electronic Submission Is Typical • Grants for federal agencies must be submitted electronically, so study that process in advance. • It can be very cumbersome. • There are lots of forms to fill out. • You’ll need obscure information (e.g., DUNS # from your university), so gather that in advance. • Pay special attention to the checklist for submittal. • Don’t wait til the last minute to upload the files; the website WILL go down, and you’ll miss the deadline.

6. Content for Main Narrative • Be novel, but not too novel. • Offer fresh ideas. • Show your passion. • Be careful of ideas that are too speculative. • Provide appropriate background and preliminary data. • Convince reviewers the work needs to be done. • Convince them you have the right credentials to be successful. • Tell them what your preliminary results imply with regard to the aims of your proposal. • Do a literature search and cite all relevant work!

7. Follow the Guidelines for Submission Very Carefully! • Proposals can, and are, thrown out for minor technical reasons. • Incorrect length and format are the most frequent offenders. • Even if your proposal goes to review, an inappropriately formatted proposal may aggravate the reviewers and have a negative impact (even if your idea is sound). • Make it easy for the reviewers to say yes. • Order the contents in your proposal EXACTLY as specified so your compliance is obvious.

8. Obey the Three Cs: Concise, Clear, and Complete • Don’t use the entire page count allotted if you don’t need to! • You make a better impression telling a “short story.” • Don’t rely on providing additional information in supplements, appendices, and references to websites to get around limited page count. • Reviewers will not read them. • Specify the scope up front. • Make sure scope is realistic with respect to your budget. • Be careful about proposing too much – this is the mark of an “amateur.” • Such proposals are often judged overly ambitious and earn poor ratings.

9. Reviewers Are People, Too • Reviewers have a large number of grants to consider in a short period of time. • They lose concentration and miss key points if “buried.” • Not all reviewers will be expert in your subject matter. • Your literary and writing skills can help them. • Provide historical perspective, human interest, humor. • Use formatting tricks (underline boldface) to emphasize key points. • Start each section with a summary of key points, then develop each with more detail in the same order.

10. Timing and Internal Review Are Important • Give yourself sufficient lead time. • Back engineer a schedule to ensure you meet the deadline! • Plan all necessary components. • Include all relevant people in the process. • Technical peers • Financial/business officers • Contracts & Grants office (that has to give final approval, esp. if campus cost sharing is included) • Get technical reviews from a variety of people.

11. Know the “Program Officer”of the Program to which You’re Applying • This person • Is your best advocate. • Has discretion over what s/he funds. • Can disagree with the peer-review recommendation and do something different. • Contact this person BEFORE you submit. • Discuss your ideas and determine if they’re likely to be well received or DOA. • Don’t rely on e-mail. Call this person, meet him/her at conferences. • The more this person knows your work and reputation, the better your chance of success.

12. Become a Proposal Reviewer Early in Your Career • Serving on peer-review panels will help you • Understand the process. • Learn what appeals/doesn’t to reviewers. • Learn about the discretion the program officer has. • Write better proposals. • Identify what reviewers you don’t want judging your proposals (when you have the option to specify them).

13. Accept Rejection with Grace • Address each criticism with the facts, not emotion. • If you are invited to resubmit, make sure you address previous concerns clearly, indicating precisely how you’ve fixed the problems.

14. NSF Grant Application Guide • http://www.nsf.gov/pubs/policydocs/grantsgovguide0111.pdf

15. Sample Electronic Form: NSF Cover Sheet

16. Outline for a Proposal (Final Exam):You’re Telling a Story • Cover page with proposal title, your name, department, and university • Pick a title that describes project, makes sense, creates excitement, is easy to understand, and not too long • Executive summary suitable for public dissemination • No proprietary/confidential information • Description of proposed project • Goals and objectives • Detailed project plan – how you will go about the work • Context/background – where your proposed project fits, why it’s important, why it can be done now • Literature review with references cited (see next slide) • Expected impact of your project • Experience and capabilities of the proposed principal investigator (you!) • Evaluation plan – how you plan to evaluate your results • Dissemination of results – how you plan to communicate results of the project to other professionals in engineering • Review criteria (see last slide)

17. Sample Literature Review The role of government in health care has expanded over the years and remains a contested issue that influences political discourse and policy incentives. Still, the government, with its extensive programs and market influence, can be a major factor in achieving better quality and value in health care in the future and the success or failure of lasting health care reform. Some researchers believe that, because neither the public nor private sector has controlled growth in costs, what is needed are changes in health care financing, new stakeholder partnerships, and development of solutions that address the problem system-wide. Others point to the potential importance of electronic medical records in controlling costs. Still others argue … For example, Chernew1 argues that the gap between public spending and income growth is likely to lead to substantially higher taxes or debt. … Similarly, Baicker2and colleagues conclude …

18. Review Criteria • What is the intellectual merit of the proposed activity? • What are the broader impacts of the proposed activity?

19. Assignment: Due May 6 • Read Humphrey and Holmes, pp. 40-76. • Read Ten Simple Rules for Getting Grants by Phil Bourne • Begin an outline for your final exam: Write a 1500-word funding proposal to secure funding for a project in your area of expertise.