Abstract
Grant writing is an essential skill to develop for academic and other career success but providing individual feedback to large numbers of trainees is challenging. In 2014, we launched the Stanford Biosciences Grant Writing Academy to support graduate students and postdocs in writing research proposals. Its core program is a multi-week Proposal Bootcamp designed to increase the feedback writers receive as they develop and refine their proposals. The Proposal Bootcamp consisted of two-hour weekly meetings that included mini lectures and peer review. Bootcamp participants also attended faculty review workshops to obtain faculty feedback. Postdoctoral trainees were trained and hired as course teaching assistants and facilitated weekly meetings and review workshops. Over the last six years, the annual Bootcamp has provided 525 doctoral students and postdocs with multi-level feedback (peer and faculty). Proposals from Bootcamp participants were almost twice as likely to be funded than proposals from non-Bootcamp trainees. Overall, this structured program provided opportunities for feedback from multiple peer and faculty reviewers, increased the participants’ confidence in developing and submitting research proposals, while accommodating a large number of participants.
Highlights
Apart from the obvious financial benefits of submitting a successful grant proposal, the proposal writing process provides graduate students and postdocs with skill-building opportunities for thinking critically and communicating ideas, required competencies for most careers [1]
The potential intellectual and professional development embodied in the grant writing process are often under-realized
The annual multi-week Proposal Bootcamp ( 8 weeks) in the Autumn Quarter is one of the core programs overseen by the part-time (40%) Grant Writing Academy Director (Crystal Botham, PhD; a research development strategist)
Summary
Apart from the obvious financial benefits of submitting a successful grant proposal, the proposal writing process provides graduate students and postdocs with skill-building opportunities for thinking critically and communicating ideas, required competencies for most careers [1]. Proposal Bootcamp: Structured peer and faculty feedback improves trainees’ proposals and confidence aims of the project; and to articulate how the proposed research challenges or seeks to shift current research paradigms [2, 3] Precisely because it places these intellectual demands on the writer, writing a proposal is a time-consuming process: it requires the writer to devote time to reading the primary literature and thinking deeply about their research questions, approaches to answer those questions, and implications of their research on the broader field. Large-scale grant writing seminars typically cover the agency’s guidelines, application logistics, and tips on writing techniques but yield uneven results and low improvement in writing capability These programs can underemphasize the power of an iterative process in writing a compelling proposal. Programs that can provide the critical and iterative feedback that is required for persuasive writing often have small numbers (
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