Solicited Proposal About a Summer Undergraduate Research Project
Proposing & Persuading Class Andrea Mencarelli 4th December 2007
Outline
• Why a proposal for an undergraduate
project? Who is the real applicant? • Description of the RFP • Topic of the proposal • Parts of the proposal
– Application – Reference letter – Project Proposed
• My reflection
Why a proposal for an undergraduate project?
• Continuation of the unsolicited proposal
sent to my advisor to hire a student to help us in our model research • Good training for a proposal about my field due to the scarcity of real proposal • Example to show to my advisor students to invite them to apply
Who is the real applicant?
• Student of Engineering • Sophomore year or older • Interesting in advance studies about
concrete behavior
Ordinary Resistance Test Advance Fracture Test
Description of the RFP
• From the RPI Office of • • • •
Undergraduate Education Funding for research projects with a faculty advisor Ten-week period full-time job $3000 of stipend http://undergrad.rpi.edu/
Topic of the proposal
• Current situation: many experimental data
about concrete, but not organized • Effects: no knowledge about possible relations • Proposal: put in order these data • Method: database • Desired situation: data are organized and ready to be analyzed • Benefits: data immediately available and discovery of new relations
Application
• Student personal
information • Gender, ethnicity, citizenship information only for tracking and reporting purposes • Professor basic information • Abstract
Reference letter
• Student academic performances
(classes) • Student extra-academic performances (university life) • Judgment academic and professional potential of the student • Availability for additional information
Project Proposed
• Abstract • Objective & Significance: current situation
and effects • Project Design & Feasibility: proposal with methods • Background: classes, grades, internships • Presentation & Evaluation • Dissemination of Knowledge
Project Design & Feasibility: proposal with methods
• Detailed work-plan • Example of the database
Description Mix design Mechanics material Concrete c [kg/m3] ft [MPa] 1 2 290 320 3.24 4.2 Model st [MPa] 3.09 4.02
Presentation & Evaluation
• Weekly meetings • Final presentation
Evaluation criteria: • Quantitative: number of concretes inserted in the database • Qualitative: capacity of finding parameter relations
Dissemination of Knowledge
• Journal paper: complicated
way • Conference paper or poster: undergraduate student conferences from next autumn • Online database: fast and easy way
My reflections
• First approach writing a solicited proposal • Importance of the alignment • Importance of a work plan and of tables
to explain the problem solution • Importance of the dissemination of knowledge
Thank you, questions?