Inclusive Environments and Metrics in Biology Education and Research

(iEMBER) Grantwriting Community of Practice

 

Introduction to the Grantwriting Program Experiment

We are a diverse community with a range of career paths, career stages, and grant experiences. Recognizing this range of experience, we wanted to provide ways for all to participate, regardless of where they may be in a grant-writing process, or how much experience they may have. One way is to provide a range of opportunities to participate, that can allow everyone to carry on their work regardless of whether they just want to learn about writing grants, or they are raring to go with their proposal, team, and identified mechanism for funding and deadline all set. 

Our pilot experiment aimed to support the development of numerous applications at once, regardless of the stage of development, need for new members or collaborators, and need for involvement from our end. To that end we set up dedicated “Office Hours” for supporting all kinds of groups working on proposals, with time to work together on proposals following short presentations on particular, needed topics, and “Grantwriting Coffee Hours”, with speakers talking about various topics, with an opportunity afterward for discussion.
 

Coffee Hours:

We found, in previous Coffee Hours, participants sharing a number of experiences shedding light on the “hidden curriculum” of the grant-writing process; we have a wealth of experiences among our community, and we wanted to support this continued sharing and learning from each other, as well as from grant-writing professionals.

We are therefore held Coffee Hours to provide spaces for more nuanced discussions about the “hidden curriculum” of the grant-writing process. We will recorded presentations and have share resources throughout, please see below. 

Office Hours:

One of the hardest things with grantwriting is simply carving out time to write, and work together as a team. We wanted to provide space to do that, but also for people to come with questions, discussions and requests for help or collaboration. 

We also wanted to provide an opportunity for people to participate in authentic grantwriting practice regardless of where they are in their journey or professional development. Some of you know exactly what you are applying for, and have your team ready; others may be looking for team members, or for ideas on what to apply for, or simply want to learn more about the process, working with others. To this end, we hosted “Office Hours” every month as 2-hour sessions from January to April 2024.

 

Grantwriting Coffee Hours

Month	Day	Time	Topic(s)	Host(s)	Materials (videos, slides, etc)
April	4	1:00 PM ET, 12 PM CT, 11 AM MT, and 10 AM PT	Navigating Internal Policies and Politics	iEMBER Steering Committee with special guest speaker Dr. Charles Henderson	Video
March	7	1:00 PM ET, 12 PM CT, 11 AM MT, and 10 AM PT	Budget Building, and Sponsored Project Office perspectives	iEMBER Steering Committee	Blogpost
February	1	1:00 PM ET, 12 PM CT, 11 AM MT, and 10 AM PT	Broader Impacts and Innovation in Dissemination	iEMBER Steering Committee with special guest speaker Dr. Craig Ogilvie	Video
January	4	1:00 PM ET, 12 PM CT, 11 AM MT, and 10 AM PT	Shifting Institutional and National Contexts	iEMBER Steering Committee with special guest speaker Dr. Adrienne Dixson	Video
December	7	1:00 PM ET, 12 PM CT, 11 AM MT, and 10 AM PT	Building a Team, and Writing to the Call	iEMBER Steering Committee
November	2	1:00 PM ET, 12 PM CT, 11 AM MT, and 10 AM PT	Project Ideation/Contacting Program Officer	iEMBER Steering Committee with special guest speaker Dr. Bonnie Green	Summary Page
October	5	1:00 PM ET, 12 PM CT, 11 AM MT, and 10 AM PT	Grant Evaluation: Choosing an evaluator for your grant and why it is important.	iEMBER Steering Committee with special guest speaker Dr. Ellen Puccia
April 2023	28	1:00 PM ET, 12 PM CT, 11 AM MT, and 10 AM PT	Intro to the iEMBER Grant-writing Community of Practice	Gary McDowell	Recording and Slides

 

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