Chemical Education Today edited by
Association Report: CUR
Judith A. Halstead
The CUR Institute on Proposal Writing
Skidmore College Saratoga Springs, NY 12866
by I. David Reingold
The Council on Undergraduate Research (CUR) has established a new Institute on Proposal Writing designed to assist faculty in writing research grant proposals. Mills and Malachowski reported in 1999 (1) on two other CUR Institutes designed to assist faculty in their efforts to do collaborative research with students. These were Institutionalizing Undergraduate Research and The Vital Faculty: Issues After Tenure. Some faculty have argued that the most effective possible support for undergraduate research would be help in obtaining grants to fund such research. The new CUR Institute has been established to provide that help. The CUR Institute on Proposal Writing was piloted last summer at the University of Michigan-Dearborn and will be repeated in summer 2001 at Juniata College in Huntingdon, Pennsylvania. Since almost all participants at the 2000 pilot offering were highly enthusiastic about the Institute, we plan to follow approximately the original format: it will last four days (two days longer than our usual Institutes), from Saturday evening through Wednesday noon. A Saturday start is designed to allow for lower airfares for participants. The Institute will accommodate about 48 participants from all fields covered by CUR (natural sciences including engineering as well as sociology and related disciplines). Each participant will be matched with other proposal writers and a facilitator in their field. On average, each group will consist of four proposal writers and one facilitator. The facilitators are faculty and administrators who are experienced and successful proposal writers and critics; all have received grants from many different agencies, and most have served on review panels. Last year there were facilitators with expertise in virtually every important granting program, and this year should be no different.
716
There are two goals for the Institute. First is the production of a nearly complete proposal. Participants are asked to bring a rough draft of a proposal, and they leave with one that is nearly complete. Second, participants obtain practice in critiquing the proposals of others. Seeing how others view a proposal is very useful and enables participants to provide a similar service for colleagues at their home institution. Much of the time during the four days is devoted to writing. Frequent group and one-on-one meetings with the facilitators are interspersed. In addition, there are plenary sessions to discuss general proposal-writing strategy that is not discipline-specific. Almost all of last year’s participants stated that the best feature of the Institute was the opportunity to spend four days devoted to this single task, an opportunity rarely available at home. In addition, many indicated that the constant backand-forth critiquing by both facilitators and other participants was very helpful; they found critiquing other grant proposals helped clarify their own thinking. The main comment by participants was that they would have benefited even more if their proposals had been more complete before the Institute started. Information about the 2001 CUR Institute on Proposal Writing (to be held at Juniata College, Huntingdon, PA, July 14–18, 2001) is available at the CUR Web site, www.cur.org/ institutes/Proposal.html or by contacting the author. Literature Cited 1. Mills, N.; Malachowski, M. J. Chem. Educ. 1999, 76, 1320.
I. David Reingold teaches chemistry at Juniata College, Huntingdon, PA 16652;
[email protected].
Journal of Chemical Education • Vol. 78 No. 6 June 2001 • JChemEd.chem.wisc.edu
