This course is designed for senior graduate students, primarily in the social sciences, who wish to learn about how academic research is funded. This course will focus on the major federal funders, including NSF, NIH, NEH, NEA, and the federal mission agencies. Some consideration will be given to grant writing for foundations. This course is not a course on programmatic grant writing for organizations; rather, this course is designed for those who are currently seeking grant funding for research, or for those who wish to do so in the future. While not as important to our fields as in the STEM disciplines, the ability to successfully compete for grant money is, like a solid publication record, becoming a prerequisite for professional success.

I invite junior faculty who are also interested in writing grants to join this seminar, either as an informal auditor, or as a registered student. The course is open to students in any discipline
The course will meet approximately every other week, with adjustments to accommodate guest speakers with experience in grant funding. The final deliverable will be a draft (near final) grant proposal ready for submission to a funding agency; for graduate students, this would likely be a dissertation improvement grant for NSF, or something similar.

There are no prerequisites for this course. However, it would be best if students have a project in mind for the grant proposal. Students who are currently writing their dissertation prospectuses may particularly profit from this course, as the prospectus writing and grant proposal writing can move on the same track. Students who have not yet passed their exams may also be interested in joining the class; a proposal generated for this course may be developed later into a dissertation prospectus and grant proposal.

The weekly schedule, including deliverables, is shown below:

Useful Links:

National Science Foundation -- Grant Proposal Guide

National Science Foundation -- Dissertation Improvement Grants

• Advice on Writing Proposals to the National Science Foundation (Carnegie Mellon)
• APSA Graduate Student Connection
• APSA Grants and Fellowships
• How to get NSF funding: a view from the inside.
• Microsoft: Writing a Good Grant Proposal
• NIH Grant Writing Tip Sheets
• NSF Grant Proposal Guide
• NSF Dissertation Improvement Grants (Social, Behavioral and Economic Sciences)
• Proposal writing resources (UNC Chapel Hill)
• Science magazine: How Not to Kill a Grant Application
• Yeshiva University: Writing the Research Grant Proposal (heavily oriented toward NIH, but good general advice too)

BOOKS:

Locke, Spirduso and Silverman, Proposals that Work: A Guide for Planning Dissertations and Grant Proposals