Fall 2018 Seminar Videos

We're happy to announce that we have posted the edited videos from our fall 2018 seminars on our vimeo site. Below are the summaries from our seminars and you can find the video links here.

NIH K Awardees Panel

Faculty Experts: Sarah Borengasser, Assistant Professor, School of Medicine; Heather Coats, Assistant Professor, College of Nursing; & Danielle Soranno, Assistant Professor, School of Medicine

The mentored NIH Research Career Development Award or K Award is unique among NIH grants. Successful candidates not only have to propose an excellent research plan but also have to show that they need mentoring and that they have the potential to be independent investigators. Join us to better understand the NIH K Awards and hear from recent awardees of the K01, K99, and K08. 

Academic v. Grant Writing

Faculty Expert: Bud Talbot, Associate Professor, Science Education and Laurel Hartley, Associate Professor, Biology

Research faculty need to write a lot, writing articles and grant proposals in particular. But, these are very different types of writing. The academic writing that goes into articles is often oriented toward other experts in the field. Proposal writing however requires the PI to pitch their idea and convince readers to invest in their project. In this seminar we will look at the difference between these types of writing, looking particularly at how you can switch gears from academic writing to grant writing. Additionally, we will learn from our faculty experts how to write in these different capacities collaboratively.

Scientific & Grant Writing Symposium

Faculty Guest Experts: Spero Manson, Associate Dean for Research, Colorado School of Public Health; Jennifer Kemp, Director, Research Office, Department of Medicine; Garth Sundem, Science Writer, Cancer Center; and Naomi Nishi, Associate Director of ORDE

Science writing and grant writing are not usually considered synonymous with clear and compelling writing. This is usually because science and grant writing require engaging complex, and highly technical subject matter. But, it can be done. Join us for this symposium and hear from several professional science/grant writers on how to improve your craft.

New Faculty Symposium

Faculty Expert: Bob Damrauer, Associate Vice Chancellor, Office of Research Services

Early Career Investigators often feel a bit isolated from the research community on a new campus. This new faculty symposium is an opportunity to familiarize yourself with the CU Denver research community and introduce yourself and your work. You also will learn more about all of the research processes and resources available to you.

Know Your Agency: Robert Wood Johnson Foundation

Faculty Expert: Shale Wong, Professor, School of Medicine

In the Know Your Agency Lunches, we feature a specific agency and ask either an investigator funded by the agency or an agency insider to give an overview of the agency and offer some of the nuances that might not be readily available on the website or program announcement. These lunches also offer an opportunity for investigators interested in applying to the agency the chance to ask questions of someone more experienced with the agency.

Resources:

ORDE Fall 2018 Seminar Videos

ORDE Spring 2019 Registration

Structuring your paragraph

Oftentimes, writers break to a new paragraph without a lot of thought. When you have a new idea, start a new paragraph is the guideline under which most of us operate. Yet, when we think about it from the reader's perspective, when a paragraph does not contain a complete thought or when a new paragraph makes a giant leap to a new subject without warning, our heads are left spinning!

So, as writers, there are a couple of things we can do to keep our readers from getting lost or frustrated. Using the mnemonic device MEAL, we can remember what should be in most paragraphs...

M - ain idea: This is your topic sentence; it sets up your reader to know what the paragraph is about

E - vidence: Of course, most main ideas need a little justification, so your evidence portion is a couple of sentences that back up your main idea.

A - nalysis: You're writing about this topic, because you have something to say about it, so what is your take on the main idea and the evidence you've cited?

L - ink or Last thought: This is a sentence or two where you conclude your thoughts and/or provide a linking sentence to the next paragraph.

Let's look at an example from an NIH award abstract:

Main  Evidence  Analysis  Link/Last thought

Excessive anxiety and fear leads to anxiety disorders, which impact many aspects of life, from the interpersonal to professional spheres. Although each anxiety disorder has different symptoms, they all share a core feature: mal-adaptive expression of high levels of anxiety. In our study, we will study how the brain suppresses anxiety. Prior studies showed the amygdala is largely responsible for generating high anxiety and fear, while the ventral medial prefrontal cortex (vmPFC) decreases these behaviors, possibly by inhibiting amygdala output. Indeed, in humans higher vmPFC activation correlates with lower amygdala activation and decreased anxiety. These data suggest the vmPFC-amygdala pathway may decrease anxiety and fear, but they rely on correlative measures, and can't directly test this hypothesis. We used optogenetics to directly test if the vmPFC-amygdala projection suppresses anxiety and fear. 

Remarkably, optogenetic activation of the vmPFC-amygdala pathway robustly inhibits innate anxiety and learned fear, while inhibition of this pathway increases anxiety.... 

As with any writing rule, there are exceptions and easily-readable paragraphs that leave out one component or another. Yet, when you pull all of the paragraphs together in a section, they should include all of the MEAL components pretty regularly.

In terms of paragraph organization, Otto Yang, in his book, Guide to Effective Grant Writing: How to Write a Successful NIH Grant Application, offers a technique to better construct and organize your paragraphs.  For one section, take the first line of every paragraph and put them together to see if those lead sentences alone give you an understanding of the piece.  This is important especially for grant-writing where reviewers often skim the numerous proposals they review. Giving your reviewers clear sign posts at the start of a paragraph will be much appreciated.

Although these techniques are helpful when you're writing, often they're more useful to apply when you are re-reading and revising.  You've already gotten your thoughts down and they seem to flow, but perhaps you'll realize in making revisions that your reader will have to read half-way through many of your paragraphs before they understand your main point.  In this case, it may serve you and your reader well to apply some paragraph revisions.

Resources:
Paragraphing with the MEAL Plan - Capella University
Paragraphs - University of North Carolina Chapel Hill Writing Center