PRESENTING A GRANT PROPOSAL* In order to conduct research today, both students and faculty in all fields must submit grant proposals. Governmental agencies, medical facilities, businesses, farmers, educational facilities, arts organizations--everyone has to submit grant proposals. Written proposals are the most common. But sometimes, you must also present a proposal orally. Oral presentations of proposed work are often necessary to obtain funding from businesses and arts organizations. Graduate students in the sciences are often required to give formal oral presentations of their proposed masters or doctoral thesis research to their committees. In general, one gets no practice with writing or presenting proposals prior to the first one. Doing a poor job (from lack of prior experience) can mean you gain no funding and so your research ends before you have begun. One objective of this assignment is to give you an opportunity to present an oral proposal when it doesn't count for anything except a grade (rather than funds that could make or break your research). The basic idea behind any grant proposal is to convince the funding agency that they should support your research. We will use the form of a grant proposal that is required by the National Science Foundation. The NSF is a major funding agency for research in molecular biology. For this course we will assume that you are applying for an Undergraduate Research Participation Grant, (recently eliminated from NSF) which funds summer research projects for undergraduates. When you submit a grant request to the NSF, they send the proposal out for review to a number of colleagues. These reviewers are scientists in your field who read the proposal and send their comments to the agency. The reviewers make a recommendation about whether the agency should support your research or not. In presenting an oral proposal, your goal is essentially the same as in a written proposal: to convince your audience that they should support your research. With most grant requests, you need to have some preliminary data or information on which to base the proposal. However, proposals generally allow more room for speculation than do published papers. You can present preliminary data that you collect on your own and/or you can present information from the literature that provides the necessary information about your model system and research plan to demonstrate that the project is feasible. By demonstrating a strong foundation for your research, you can give the reviewer the impression that your experiments will indeed yield valuable information that bear directly upon the scientific question(s) that you set out to address. "The proposal should include (1) the objectives and scientific significance of the proposed work; (2) the suitability of the methods to be employed; (3) qualifications of the investigator and (4) the amount of funding required. It should present the scientific merit of the proposed project clearly and convincingly and should be prepared with the care and thoroughness of a paper for publication." (Quoted from NSF guidelines.) You will need to convince a reviewer that the project is worth doing, that the methods are appropriate, that you are qualified and know how to do the work and that the funding is reasonable. You must make a strong case for your project and convince the funding agency to provide financial support for your research (at your requested level). Often an important part of convincing the reviewers that the project in molecular biology is "worth doing" is presenting a well-thought out plan of experiments.
*modified from Ecology 1993, Dr. B. Ploger.WHAT TO INCLUDE IN YOUR ORAL REPORTS Your talk will be a formal presentation of your Project Description. This is the main body of any proposal, written or oral. The project description should be presented more or less like a research report except that the object is to convince the audience that this is a project worth doing. The Project Description lays out very explicitly exactly what you plan to do and why it is worthwhile. A project description includes the following sections usually in this order: (a) Introduction. The introduction should establish the objectives of the research and its expected significance in enhancing understanding of an important scientific question. The introduction should include a statement of the contribution of your work to the present state of knowledge in the field. This is the place to establish the "big picture" of how your work will address one of the major questions in biology. In written proposals, a separate section, titled "significance" sometimes follows the introduction, in which case background and objectives are emphasized in the introduction, and statements about significance are reserved for this separate section. (b) Experimental Design. This should include the specific hypotheses, experimental design and a description of the experimental methods and procedures. In molecular biology, one often creates a product such as a clone, sequence, or transgenic organism. Specifically describe these products as well as any kind of data that you will collect. (c) Pilot Data. You should include any pilot results or information from the literature that will demonstrate that the project is feasible, that you know how to do the work and that you have thought through all the difficulties including the data analysis. (d) Research Schedule. You must set forth your precise time schedule for the research. In this case you must be able to conduct the research in the remainder of the semester. The granting agency needs to be convinced that the work can be completed in the allotted time. You may want to make an overhead that shows a time line and indicates what parts of the project you will due in the various weeks. (e) Summary. End with a short final section that summarizes and pulls together the proposal and makes the case for supporting the proposed research. This is a good place to restate (briefly, in one or a few sentences) the significance of your project to advancing understanding of the major issue in biology to which your work relates. Citing Literature orally:
Your oral report should focus on your research plans. It should not be a summary of each of the papers that you read. You should mention papers (i.e. author(s), journal and year published) whenever the ideas that you are expressing or the predictions you are making are based on these papers, but don't go into the details of what each paper said. Keep your focus on what you are planning to do and why you are doing it. The only time you may want to mention details from a paper would be if these specific details help you to establish that your study is feasible using your chosen organism(s). WRITTEN MATERIALS TO BE SUBMITTED: 1. Project Summary. A 150-word summary or abstract of the proposed research is required by NSF. NSF publishes these summaries in the Congressional Record if the proposal is funded. The summary should include a statement of the research objectives, the scientific methods to be employed and the significance of the proposed research to the advancement of scientific knowledge. It should be informative to scientists in the same or related fields and understandable to non-scientists. 2. Outline. A 1-page (maximum) outline of the information presented in your talk. 3. Experimental Design. An approximately 3-5 page written description of the experimental design as described above. Graphics such as flow-charts, figures and/or tables are often helpful in this section. Note that when graphics are used items must be clearly labeled. Remember that the reviewer is hearing about this project for the first time so your job is to make the description of you project easy to understand yet specific enough to convince the reviewer that the many aspects of setting-up a new research project have been well thoughtout. For example, if you are making a new clone, you must give a detailed account of: the vector to be used, source of the DNA to be cloned, selection method for identification of the clone, data which will be collected to clearly identify the clone, and controls that will be used. 3. Literature cited. A list of papers containing information you used in your grant proposal (oral and written). You want to show the reviewer that you are acquainted with the major issues in this field. Many of your references should be taken from the primary literature (i.e. not textbooks or reviews). You should also include references that help you to establish the feasibility of your project including protocols. We will use the format for references according to the Investigations manual. Note that literature cited is not the same a bibliography and should only include references that were specifically “called out” in the proposal. 4. Curriculum Vitae or Biographical Sketch. A sample format is included in Appendix I. Include anything you can think of that is relevant to your ability to carry out this project. 5. Budget. Obviously, you must include a budget in your proposal, since you are requesting support to conduct the research. Since the NSF budget page can be very complicated, you need only submit a conventional budget request for purposes of this course. For this assignment you do not need to list items that you have used during the scheduled lab sessions
of this course. All additional material should be listed. Note that some catalogues are available in the lab, others are available upon request and online. A sample budget page is included in Appendix II. A budget should be broken down into the following categories: a. Salaries and Wages. Students normally get $2,500.00 for one term of research support, so you can apply for that amount. b. Equipment. Permanent equipment is defined as anything whose initial cost is more than $300.00 or which has an expected lifetime of more than one year. You should provide realistic estimates of what you need and cannot easily borrow. Note that it is unlikely that equipment requests will be awarded for this course. c. Materials and Supplies. Indicate in general terms the types of required expendable materials and supplies with their estimated costs. d. Travel. You will want to request funds to support your travel for collecting animals or doing the research (Grinnell area only). You may request 22¢ per mile. e. Publication Costs. It costs money to prepare manuscripts, to pay the journal page charges and to buy copies of your journal article (reprints) to distribute to colleagues. Add about $200.00 here. Remember one of the questions which the reviewer of your proposal is always asked is whether your budget is realistic. They will criticize budgets that are too low as well as those that are too high. 6. Facilities Available. Every proposal has one final and important section, facilities available. Here you lay out where you are going to conduct the research,, the existing equipment you will be using and the like. Appendix I CURRICULUM VITAE Juan Paul Jones Present Address Department of Biology Grinnell College Grinnell, IA 50112 Telephone Email 641-269-3172 jones@grinnell.edu
Education Ames Senior High School Ames, Iowa Diploma 1990
Citizenship U.S.
Grinnell College Grinnell, IA, 1990-present (BS expected May 1995) (also include any other junior colleges or colleges and the years you attended them) Positions Held (List only positions related to academic achievements and to your ability to conduct this research.) Fellowships
Grants Honors and Awards Scientific Societies (list the memberships you have in scientific societies.) Languages (List any foreign languages that you can read, write or speak.) Special Skills (List here any special skills relevant to your ability to conduct research, such as scuba diver or computer skills.) Teaching Experience Talks Given at Scientific Meetings Research Projects (Include here any projects on which you have been an assistant or work-study student, directed research projects or extended projects in courses.) Publications Include oral presentations like posters here too. (Give the full citation.) (You should fill in each of the above categories if appropriate. Do not include the category if it is not relevant to you.) Appendix II BUDGET Salaries and Wages Equipment tape recorder binoculars Materials and Supplies Antibiotics Restriction enzymes Travel (100 miles at $0.22/mile) Publication Costs TOTAL $ 22.00 $ 200.00 $3372.00 $2500.00 $ 200.00 $ 250.00 $ 50.00 $ 150.00