An innovative program for cultivating grant writing skills in new faculty members.

Introduction

One of the primary missions of sponsored programs offices in both public and private universities is to encourage faculty to apply for external grants. In these days of budget shortfalls, universities are asking their faculty to take on additional teaching loads, often at the expense of time that could be dedicated to grant writing, just when the financial gains to the university from external grants would be most valuable. This provides an interesting challenge to sponsored program officers: how to encourage writing grant proposals and develop grantsmanship in faculty, especially new faculty, during these tough financial times.

The Sponsored Project and Research Center (SPARC) Office at the University of Northern Colorado has developed an innovative program designed to encourage and support grant writing activities in young faculty. The Sponsored Project Development Award (SPDA) Fellowship Program is a two-year fellowship designed for new faculty. Faculty members submit applications to the SPARC Office, which then reviews the applications and selects a group of SPDA Fellows to begin the fellowship together as a cohort. The Fellowship makes certain demands on the fellows during the two-year program, but it also provides the fellows with a variety of incentives to aid in their grant writing development. The Application Form Cover Page, which describes the requirements and benefits of the program, is included as Appendix A. Note that both the department chair and the dean must sign off on the application, thereby guaranteeing both their financial and logistical support for the fellow while he/she participates in the program.

In Spring 2003, the SPARC Office chose a cohort of seven faculty to participate in the SPDA Program. This paper contains a description of how the SPARC Office developed the SPDA Program and garnered support for the program from the university administration. It also contains direct feedback on aspects of the SPDA Program from the seven current fellows including information on the diversity of backgrounds represented by the fellows, perceptions of the pros and cons of the program, and suggestions for improvement.

Conception and Support for the SPDA Program

The SPARC Office at the University of Northern Colorado developed the Sponsored Project Development Award Fellowship Program as one piece of its internal grants program. Begun in the fall of 2001, the goal was to increase the number of faculty members who were writing successful grant proposals. The design for the Fellowship Program was an amalgamation of ideas garnered from a study of other institutions' faculty development and internal grants programs and from professional presenters at grant-writing workshops. The method was to bring in ten young faculty members with a desire to become involved in grant proposal writing, to provide them with a research development account, and to involve them, as a cohort, in a year-long series of intensive and hands-on development activities related to grantsmanship and proposal writing. The goal was that when these individuals became successful at getting grants, they would then go on to mentor others.

Funding for the program came from the portion of indirect cost recovery retained by SPARC for faculty development. In addition, each of the six deans was asked to contribute $500 from their college toward a research development account for each Fellow. The budget for the program was $40,000, or $4,000 per Fellow, to cover the costs of proposal writing workshops, travel to Washington, visits to mentors, research development accounts of $2,000 per fellow (in addition to the $500 from the deans), and a variety of other development meetings and activities.

To encourage buy-in of the program at the college level, each dean was asked to nominate the Fellows from his or her college. The result was an original cohort composed of eleven faculty members (an increase of one from the originally planned ten) from five colleges and the libraries, and from eleven different disciplines. From the onset, there were difficulties working with a group of that size comprised of individuals who had not volunteered, but had been nominated to participate. One Fellow asked to be removed from the program after the first month because he simply was not interested. Finding common meeting times for ten Fellows was next to impossible, and the group did not bond as a cohort. Some Fellows continued to work at learning grantsmanship and writing proposals, but many of the planned activities did not take place and the goal of the program was not met.

The idea of a grant development cohort did not die, however; and after reviewing and redesigning the program, it was initiated again in the spring of 2003. The Fellows were selected through a competitive application process designed to assure that those selected as Fellows would be individuals who were not only interested, but also qualified and ready to participate in a newly designed two-year program.

The seven Fellows participating in the Spring 2003 SPDA Program are all assistant professors from different disciplines. They are Dr. Marilyn Banta, Department of Biological Sciences, College of Arts and Sciences; Dr. Robin Brewer, Division of Exceptionalities and Bilingual/ESL Education, College of Education; Dr. Heng-Yu Ku, Department of Educational Technology, College of Education; Dr. Kimberly (Kim) Pacheco, Department of Chemistry and Biochemistry, College of Arts and Sciences; Dr. Robert (Rob) Powers, Department of Mathematical Sciences, College of Arts and Sciences; Dr. Julie Robinson, Department of English, College of Arts and Sciences; and Dr. Gardiner Tucker, Division of Educational Leadership and Policy Studies, College of Education. The remainder of this article is a roundtable discussion involving the seven members of the Spring 2003 cohort about various aspects of the SPDA Fellowship Program.

Impetus for Applying to be an SPDA Fellow

In this section the fellows describe why they were interested in applying for the SPDA Fellowship. In addition to the incentives the program provides, the applicants generally were interested in learning more about grant proposal writing and improving their grantsmanship skills.

Rob: I applied for the SPDA Fellowship as an incentive to increase my scholarly activity. I had a colleague in the mathematical sciences department who was a member of the first cohort. She recommended that I apply because of the incentives: the release time during one semester, the $600 in start-up funds, and the mentorship model of grant writing. From the little information I received from her, however, the first SPDA Fellowship did not seem to be going too well. I think the administrators of the program learned quite a bit from the first cohorts, which they have applied to ours.

Robin: Like Rob said, the course release was very attractive and will be helpful for me in continuing my goal to write a grant proposal to the U. S. Office of Special Education Programs. I know the importance of getting grants and how grant funds can assist a faculty member with dissemination, up-to-date equipment, and support for the additional staff to help us in partnership schools. I am not very disciplined when it comes to finding the time to write. I am hoping the accountability to my fellow SPDA Fellows will provide me with the incentive to write more grant proposals. An unexpected outcome so far has been meeting others in the university that I would have otherwise not met. Collaborating on projects, such as this one, would have not been possible for me without the SPDA Fellowship.

Heng-Yu: I hesitated to apply for the SPDA fellowship at first became I did not feel that I was qualified. To be honest, the incentive motivated me to apply for it. I am interested in seeing how people pull everything together in a cohesive way to write grant proposals. I also would like to find a mentor or mentors who can give me advice and guide me through the grant writing process.

Kim: I applied to the SPDA Fellows program because I wanted more support in the area of writing grant proposals. The department of chemistry feels that it is important for the new people in the department to submit proposals, but there is not a rich history of grant writing in the department.

Marilyn: Similar to Kim, my department chair initially encouraged me to apply for the SPDA fellowship, and reading about the requirements of the program I thought it sounded like it would work well for me; I can be a procrastinator and prefer to work with deadlines. Grant writing on my own would be at my own pace, and I thought I might not submit grants as expeditiously as I might if I had strict deadlines to follow. Having to submit a list of goals updated every 90 days to the SPDA administrator appealed to me for this reason--it would encourage me to make new goals as well as to assess my progress.

Julie: I applied to be a SPDA Fellow because I wanted to have a home base of sorts in the University. I wanted a niche. Because very few members of the English department faculty write grants, I figured that moving into that arena would help me carve out a name for myself. I like the idea of being the person in the department who knows a bit about grants and grant writing. I can be a specialist among my colleagues.

Gardiner: I applied at the encouragement of my Division Director, who thought I was a good match for the criteria. Grant writing has been an unknown to me and I don't know the territory, the language, the rules, or the people, so I thought this program would de-mystify the process and help me to master one of the skills of an effective faculty member.

The Importance of the SPDA Cohort

Moving groups of fellows through the program as a unified cohort was one of the primary objectives of the SPARC Office when they developed the SPDA Program. On the whole, the fellows find this tact beneficial in many ways and feel it is a very strong, positive component of the SPDA Program.

Heng-Yu: I think that the best part of being in a cohort is sharing ideas with each other. I no longer feel that I have to pursue grant writing alone and it's great that I have others to share ideas with. All of us are assistant professors from different departments and are relatively new to our university. Some grants emphasize a spirit of cooperation among people from different fields. By knowing these people as cohorts, I can easily make connections and get to know other people through them. I feel like I belong to a community and not learning alone anymore.

Marilyn: I agree with Heng-Yu, talking to other members of this cohort has given me new ideas about the types of grants I can apply for, ideas that I would not have generated independently. Also, as part of our requirements, we must review each other's grants. I know this will be very instructive, on both sides. Having non-biologists read my grants will greatly improve their clarity and flow. Reading other grants will give me great ideas about how grants can be written and will give me new ideas that should improve my own grants.

Gardiner: The cohort has started to become a support group and tour group for the new culture of grant writing. The support comes from all of us being in a similar place in our careers and especially with grant writing, from each of us encouraging the others, and from the Grants Office research administrators through conveying a can-do attitude to us.

Kim: It is nice to be able to share concerns and questions with the other SPDA Fellows. Also, our participation lets the SPARC office know that we are actively pursuing funds, and that we are trying to be conscientious faculty members. This simply increases their willingness to help us because the SPARC office wants to see the faculty succeed.

Julie: Right now we see each other relatively often through our SPDA Fellowship, but I imagine that our relationships will develop and extend beyond our two years together. This is because we will struggle through many of the same issues as our careers evolve. By developing relationships now, we have a group of people we can trust as tenure looms closer.

Heng-Yu: I am thrilled to be part of the SPDA fellowship. I want to learn how to be a "great" grant seeker, grant reviewer, and grant getter. I want to be able to find out where to find more grant funding opportunities that relate to Educational Technology. I enjoy learning why some proposals get funded while others do not. I am especially interested in studying how people get multimillion dollar grants, the grant structures, which methodologies they used, and how they structured their proposals.

Marilyn: One unexpected benefit that is emerging from my participation in this program is a closer relationship with our sponsored projects office. All grants must go through this office, so knowing the personnel there, how they work, and how the system works is quite valuable.

Julie: Being SPDA Fellows allows us to get to know the Grants Office research administrators. Building this relationship is vital for future proposals and proposal ideas. It also gives us two years where I we are perceived as learners. The Grants Office research administrators act as our mentors (which they are) and are partially responsible for our success. My experience so far has been positive because the research administrators understand that I am new and still learning.

Robin: I also am learning about how the Grants Office works at our university. The politics, who does what, who to go to for what information, what I need and what they can provide.

The Significance of Grant Writing to New Faculty Members

In this section, the fellows discuss their views on writing grant proposals from the position of young faculty trying to earn tenure. Vastly different personal and departmental expectations regarding grant proposal writing are revealed.

Robin: Thinking about grant writing as a new faculty member is relatively daunting. The grants I knew about coming into the program were 50-page grants--rather intimidating to me when sitting down to write. I now appreciate that I need to develop a reputation in the field of special education before going for the "big" grants. Having others that I trust to help me review my grants before I send them in will be helpful. I'm more optimistic about writing now. I just have to be more disciplined.

Julie: I never considered grant writing until I took this faculty position. Grant writing was never discussed during my graduate student days. We focused on getting articles published and presenting papers at conferences. Grant writing just never entered the picture for me or for many graduate students I knew in English programs throughout the University. So, as a new faculty member thinking about grant writing, I am actually an anomaly. I am so new to it I feel like a student all over again. And I am! That is probably one of the things I like about it most. What worries me is actually getting the grants--when will I ever find the time to do all the exciting ideas I keep writing about in grant proposals?

Rob: Grant writing in the department of mathematical sciences is not necessarily a critical factor for being a successful member of the department. Like English, in the field of mathematics, scholarly activity often is based on publications and much of the research in mathematics is theoretical in nature that needs little external funding. Mathematics education is entirely different. To conduct research in mathematics education, data must be collected and analyzed, which often requires video or audio taping and other equipment. Additionally, many mathematics education projects involve curriculum materials or instructional and assessment tools that need to be purchased for the participating schools. All of this requires funding.

Kim: Being a new faculty member in the chemistry department, I am expected to write proposals and bring in research dollars to fund both undergraduate and graduate research programs. But the reason I want to write more and better grant proposals is that a responsible member of the faculty should want to do what is best for the students. Chemistry is a field that requires expensive instrumentation and funds for consumable supplies for research. In order for the students to have the best possible educational experience, they must be given the opportunity to participate in research that is of current interest and uses modern instrumentation. The only way to offer an ongoing and sustained research program is to seek external funding from granting agencies.

Marilyn: Similar to Kim, grant writing is a now considered an expectation. The long-term trend in biology has been away from teaching-based faculty with little or no expectation of research, to new hires of research-oriented faculty with a strong research agenda. I fall into the latter category. Along with the expectation of productive research (to include publications and advising graduate students) I am expected to apply for external grants. No grant--no tenure. For the most part, one cannot conduct research without funds, so the two must go hand in hand. However, an emphasis on grantsmanship is not new to me, it started in graduate school where I applied for, oh, probably a dozen small grants to fund my dissertation research. In addition, despite rather heavy teaching loads, the faculty in our department has been remarkably successful at receiving external grants, so a pretty high bar has been set.

Julie: Wow! I cannot imagine the pressure Marilyn feels. I, on the other hand, do not come from a discipline that even thinks about grants. Being in English Education affords me many opportunities in grant writing because literacy development is a heavily funded enterprise. Others in the English department do not have these kinds of grant writing avenues, so many faculty members do not write a single grant in their career.

Where is the SPDA Going to Lead?

In this section Fellows contemplate where participation in the SPDA Program will lead them. On the whole, the fellows have high expectations that the Program will improve their grant proposal writing skills and their ability to successfully compete for grants.

Marilyn: Frankly, my ultimate goal is to get tenure. In my department, it is pretty well understood that if I haven't at least applied for, and more likely if I haven't gotten a large external research grant, tenure is a no-go for me. When this two-year fellowship is done I will have submitted two grant proposals, and this will put me firmly on the road to a successful tenure package. On a more proximate level, I cannot continue my research for long without a research grant. I was given start up funds to equip my laboratory, but to gather data, complete experiments, train and fired graduate students and publish and present my research, I need money. So a research grant is a necessity to me, and this fellowship will help me get there more quickly, in my opinion, than if I was not a part of the SPDA. I am really excited about this prospect.

Rob: If one of the grants happens to be successful, then I think in grant writing success follows success. In fact, it seems like grant writing is a vicious cycle similar to the cycle of poverty: Granting institutions do not want to award novices money because they have not shown a record of success, but money is needed in order to become successful. Whether or not I am successful in obtaining grant from the SPDA Program, the experience of writing the grants will be used in the future. I think being part of the cohort and learning about other colleagues' goals may lead to collaborative grant writing as well. As a mathematics educator, I can foresee working with several of the members of the cohort in research and teaching programs funded by grants. At the very least, the experience of working with the UNC faculty has been a great opportunity to network.

Heng-Yu: Personally, I enjoy the opportunities to get to know other SPDA Fellows who are from different disciplines and I find their research interesting. I can also see myself working with some of them in the near future to pursue some external grants. For example, if there was a grant proposal related to English writing and Technology then I could contact Julie, and if a grant proposal was related to math and technology then I could contact Rob, etc. Even though this is only my first semester as a SPDA Fellow, I feel that I made many friends and made more connections with people outside of my own discipline.

Gardiner: I believe the SPDA will help me to take a chance, a risk, and just begin to try. It will develop my confidence over time and link me to the campus and national resources I need to be a successful grant writer--building my grant writing self-esteem, so to speak. I am encouraged by the personal support of our SPARC staff here, and see the genuine care they have for us as fellows. This will help our entire group learn the skills of grant writing.

Julie: I'm not sure I have any idea where SPDA will lead me, but that is one of the reasons why I like it. I find a lot of value in getting to know other faculty in different departments and a wider view of the University in general. In terms of my future, I think that being an SPDA Fellow will also give me some grant writing ethos in the English department. Already I have people ask me to help them with grants, grant ideas, and I've been given the unofficial title of "grant guru." That's a bit strange, I admit it, but I do like knowing that the faculty value this grant writing track I want to take in my career.

Robin: I plan to write grant proposals so that I can fund my desire to work in schools. This will then lead me to be able to write texts, articles and report relevant research related to my funded grants.

Kim: I hope the SPDA Fellows programs leads to lasting relationships across the university community. I have already gotten to know some truly wonderful people through the program and have contacts in departments other than my own for help with grant proposal writing and other issues common to new faculty that may arise. I hope it will lead to possible collaborations with other Fellows.

Conclusion

Overall, the seven SPDA Fellows are actively pursuing grant funding and are enhancing their skills in writing successful grant proposals. With the support of each other, the SPARC office, and each of their departmental chairs, faculty, and deans, the Fellows are becoming successful teacher-scholars continuing to provide students with quality educational experiences in the classroom, while bringing in additional grant funding for research projects. The Fellows feel that the program has been helpful to them so far and expect to take advantage of the opportunities that the SPARC Office provides in the future. Additional support (e.g., time, money, help with grant proposals) provided by the SPARC Office and the University allows each Fellow time to perform preliminary research and write proposals as well as the opportunity to develop as teacher-scholars. The relationships established among the Fellows will continue throughout their careers, laying the foundation for interdepartmental collaborations and support.

Appendix A

SPONSORED PROJECT DEVELOPMENT AWARD PROGRAM APPLICATION COVER PAGE

Applicant Agreement:

Should this application result in the award of an SPDA fellowship, I agree to participate fully in the program by:

* Attending a day-long proposal writing workshop on April 18, 2003.

* Participating in at least six additional learning activities selected from a roster of grantsmanship workshops and seminars that will be sponsored by SPARC throughout the program period.

* Developing a written self-contract to include research and grantwriting goals and objectives for five years, for the 24 month fellowship period, and for the ensuing 90 day period. Reviewing and submitting a new 90 day contract every three months during the program period.

* Developing a mentoring relationship with another faculty or staff member at UNC in order to establish a network of key colleagues, and working with the mentor throughout the program period to strengthen grantsmanship skills.

* Attending at least eight of ten group luncheon meetings that will be scheduled throughout the program period to discuss different areas of grantsmanship, brainstorm research plans, and present progress in achieving program goals with other program participants. The first of these meetings will be held May 2, 2003.

* Attending the Annual Distinguished Scholar Banquet during both years of the program.

* Submitting two proposals of at least $50,000 each (one of which must be to a federal agency) before the first of April, 2005.

* If those proposals are not funded, revising and resubmitting for the next deadline or to a different sponsor (this is likely to occur after the program period has ended in some cases).

* Developing a Quality Review Team to review my proposals before the proposal deadline date, allowing adequate time to revise the proposal according to the review team's comments, if needed, prior to submission.

* Participating on Quality Review Teams for at least two other SPDA fellows, reviewing one of their proposals prior to submission.

* Submitting interim progress reports on 12/1/03 and 10/1/04, and a final report on 4/1/05 to the Dean of the Graduate School and Associate Vice President for Research.

Applicant Signature-- Date--

Administrative Agreement:

Should this applicant be selected for a fellowship award, I will support the applicant's participation in the 2004 SPDA Program by agreeing to:

* Allow time for the participant to attend the required program sessions (workshops, meetings, trips);

* Allow a one-course release for the participant during fall semester 2003, the actual cost for replacement (salary and fringe benefits) up to $3,000 to be paid by SPARC;

* Give the participant's work in the program appropriate consideration in promotion, tenure, and salary increase decisions; and

* Select a mentor with the participant, who is knowledgeable of the participant's proposed work and is willing to devote time to help the participant during the two-year program period.

Department Chair/Unit Director-- Date-- College Dean/Admin. Equivalent-- Date--

Authors' Note: The authors acknowledge the support of Dr. Allen M. Huang, Interim Provost at the University of Northern Colorado. Contact Heng-Yu Ku, Department of Educational Technology, University of Northern Colorado, Greeley, Colorado 80639. Phone: [phone]. Fax: [phone]. Email: [e-mail].

Marilyn Banta, Robin Brewer, Arlene Hansen, Heng-Yu Ku, Kimberly Pacheco, Robert Powers, Julie Robinson, and Gardiner Tucker

(The order of authorship is alphabetical and all authors contributed equally) University of Northern Colorado