Chemical Education Today edited by
Michelle Bushey
Obtaining Chemistry Equipment through Curriculum Development Grants
Department of Chemistry Trinity University San Antonio, TX 78212
by Thomas J. Wenzel Department of Chemistry, Bates College, Lewiston, Maine 04240
[email protected] You have read recently about the National Science Foundation's Curriculum Development Program (1) TUES (Transforming Undergraduate Education in Science, Technology, Engineering and Mathematics) (2) and exciting equipment that is available (3), and you are motivated to submit a grant proposal to secure a new instrument for your curriculum. Unfortunately, more proposals are rejected than funded, so you want one that stands out from the crowd. The advice offered herein can help turn a good proposal into an excellent one. It comes from my perspective of having received several grants and reviewed many proposals on curriculum development activities. Identify the Scope of Your Project Before you can write the proposal you have to determine what equipment you need, what courses you will use it in, and what curriculum development activities you will undertake in the courses. While it might be tempting to use the equipment in as many courses as possible to increase the number of students in the project, it is important to be realistic with your plans. Each course must include high-quality educational experiences that fit together into an overall plan for development of expertise and learning goals. Have an Excellent Idea Reviewers will assess whether your project will result in a high-quality learning experience for students. If not, your proposal will not be funded. The best result is if the reviewers wish they could take your courses. Outline the specific learning goals that will be achieved through acquisition of the equipment and incorporation of new experiences in the laboratory. An excellent set of learning goals for undergraduates is available in a document by Ewell (4). An alternative is to use Bloom's taxonomy to identify learning goals (5). Ensure that the equipment requested is commensurate with your learning goals. If the request represents a “replacement” of existing equipment, demonstrate that features of the new instrument will permit new experiments that enhance student learning. Introducing students to new equipment and measurement techniques in and of itself does not guarantee improvements in student learning. Reviewers will look for experiences that promote learning goals that extend beyond content. One way that people often try to achieve the higher-order learning goals identified in something like Bloom's taxonomy is to incorporate “inquiry-based” activities into the curriculum. It is widely recognized that improved learning can occur when students have to discover concepts, especially if they are working in cooperation with each other. 1128
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Support Claims of Inquiry- or Discovery-Based Activities If you intend to include such activities in your proposal, they must be well designed and must convince reviewers that these activities truly involve meaningful inquiry. Sprinkling the term “inquiry-based” throughout the proposal is not enough. Among other things, students have to think, perform critical evaluations, and make independent decisions in meaningful, inquiry-based activities. Examples of these activities should be provided in the text for each course in which the equipment will be used. If you have developed extensive inquiry-based materials for other instrumental techniques, it is possible to put them on a Web site and provide the URL in the proposal, although these should be summarized in the text as well. Some reviewers may take the time to examine materials on a Web site. Reviewers must feel that the examples you provide are meaningful learning experiences that bode well for the nature of other materials you will develop in the project. Base Your Plans on Prior Work The proposal should build on prior work. You are not the first person to use the instrument in the curriculum. A curriculum proposal needs relevant references just like a research proposal. These might be NSF reports, other educational or scientific reports, NSF-funded projects, and other publications that inspire and guide your curricular plans. If you have completed some preliminary or pilot work related to the project, a description of it should be included. Describe Uses of the Instrument in Research It is rare at predominantly undergraduate institutions to have equipment that is only used in courses. Equipment is used for research as well. Student participation in research is an excellent opportunity for learning. Aspects of how the equipment will be used in research projects during the academic year and summer can enhance the quality of the proposal. Include an Implementation Plan and Timeline Include information on when the curriculum development activities will occur, who will actually complete them, and when changes will be incorporated into the courses described in the proposal. The timeline should include information on when formative and summative assessment data will be gathered. Provide an Assessment Plan A TUES proposal must have an assessment plan that evaluates student-learning outcomes. Assessment should be done
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early on as a formative process that provides data used to improve the curricular developments. Summative assessment is done at the completion of the project. The assessment plan should build from the learning goals that have been incorporated into the proposal. Some aspects of assessment may involve processes already in place (e.g., formal student course evaluation, exams). There are general assessment instruments that have been developed, some of which are included in the TUES program announcement. But some aspects of assessment must be designed to evaluate specific aspects of your project. Because faculty members are rarely versed in proper assessment methods, bring in a paid expert. This person should be involved in the project from the start, and is often not a scientist but someone who does assessment as a form of scholarly work. This person may be someone at your institution who has demonstrated expertise with assessment. Often it is someone outside your institution. A biographical sketch for this individual should be included in the proposal and should have items in it that clearly demonstrate this individual's expertise with assessment. Provide a Dissemination Plan An excellent dissemination plan will significantly expand the broader impacts of the work. Dissemination involves more than simply putting materials on a Web site. It may be possible to have the Web site included in one of the NSF-funded national digital libraries. You may commit to giving talks about the project at conferences or at discipline-specific networking opportunities where curricular developments are discussed. The best is to publish peer-reviewed articles in chemistry or science education journals; if you describe previous work you have done on curriculum development, it helps to have a prior record of bringing curriculum development projects to publication. Show Institutional Commitment to Your Work TUES grants do not require matching support and reviewers are not to consider it when evaluating your work. But it still helps to show reviewers that your institution is committed to your project and helps support your work. Any form of support provided by your department or institution that will assist you with the project (e.g., travel support, student assistance, funds for materials and supplies) can be discussed in the proposal or budget justification. Reviewers will want to see that the institution is committed to maintaining the equipment. Attach a letter of support from an appropriate administrator that specifies the institution's commitment to maintain the equipment and support the curricular innovations beyond the expiration of the grant. Similarly, if the institution is providing additional support to enable the purchase of a piece of equipment that costs more than the maximum allowed under a Type 1 TUES award (e.g., superconducting NMR spectrometer), a letter expressing this commitment should be attached. Prepare an Appropriate Budget In a TUES proposal, you can request funds for all of the activities needed to complete the project. This can include summer salary for time you will need to develop curricular materials, support for students to help with curricular development, travel to observe practitioners of the curricular innovations you will model, travel to conferences to present the work,
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and support for consultants to help with curricular development or assessment. The budget justification should clearly spell out the intention of and need for the funds. Prepare a budget that includes what is legitimately needed to complete the project. A budget with categories that appear padded or unjustified or one that does not provide sufficient funds for key aspects of the project may influence the scores of reviewers. Contact Your Program Officer If You Have Questions Program officers are eager to help you. If it is a straightforward question, e-mail your program officer. If it is more complex, it still helps to e-mail the program officer in advance with the general topic and ask to set up a phone appointment. That allows the program officer to be better prepared for the call. Follow the Guidelines This seems obvious, yet the number of proposals I have reviewed that did not adhere to some aspect of the guidelines is surprising. Even if the mistake involves a relatively insignificant part of the proposal (e.g., biographical sketch), sloppiness in following the guidelines may cause reviewers to question whether you will be similarly sloppy in the execution of the project. It could make a difference if failure to follow some aspect of the guidelines causes one or more reviewers to lower their score. Resubmit Rejected Proposals Many proposals are rejected on the first submission. Carefully consider the comments of the reviewers and arrange a phone appointment with the program officer if you have uncertainties about how to interpret the reviews. If you determine that you can satisfactorily address the concerns raised by the reviewers, submit a revised proposal in the next round. Seek Out Additional Help The Council on Undergraduate Research offers a variety of programs including a Dialogue meeting in Washington, DC and proposal-writing workshops that are designed to put people in contact with program officers and help people write more competitive proposals (6). ACS meetings have sessions that highlight NSF-catalyzed curriculum development activities. The NSF Web site provides abstracts of funded proposals. Many ways are available to get additional insights that will allow you to write more competitive curriculum development proposals to get that new piece of equipment. Good luck! Literature Cited 1. Hixson, S.; Chang, E.-W.; Holmes, B. E. J. Chem. Educ. 2010, 87, 247–249. 2. Transforming Undergraduate Education in Science, Technology, Engineering and Mathematics (TUES). http://www.nsf.gov/ funding/pgm_summ.jsp?pims_id=5741 (accessed Aug 2010). 3. (a) Zovinka, E. P.; Stock, A. E. J. Chem. Educ. 2010, 87, 350–352. (b) Bower, N. W.; Blanchet, C. J. K. J. Chem. Educ. 2010, 87, 467–469. (c) Brown, D. R. J. Chem. Educ. 2010, 87, 370–371. (d) Vannatta, M. W.; Richards-Babbs, M.; Solomon, S. D. J. Chem. Educ. 2010, 87, 770–772. (e) Urbach, A. R. J. Chem. Educ. 2010, 87, 891–893.
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4. Ewell, P. T. Accreditation and Student Learning Outcomes: A Proposed Point of Departure; Council for Higher Education Accreditation: Washington, DC, 2001. http://www.chea.org/ pdf/EwellSLO_Sept2001.pdf (accessed Aug 2010). 5. (a) Bloom, B. S. Taxonomy of Educational Objectives: The Classification of Education Goals: Handbook I, Cognitive Domain; Longmans,
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Green: New York, 1956. (b) Anderson, L. W.; Krathwohl, D. R.; Bloom, B. S. Taxonomy for Learning, Teaching and Assessing: A Revision of Bloom's Taxonomy of Educational Objectives; Longman Publishing: New York, 2000. 6. Council on Undergraduate Research Home Page. http://www.cur. org/ (accessed Aug 2010).
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