Program Officer Tips

Last week, ORDE hosted a talk by NEH Program Officer, Dr. Judy Adkins. She shared lots of information on the NEH, but beyond this she offered several key grant development tips that are useful for grant proposals well beyond those for the NEH.

I've captured her grant development tips here:

Start early: Grant proposals with all their ancillary parts almost always take longer to put together and write than we think, and competitive proposals definitely do! As soon as you identify an opportunity you think is a good fit, you should map out a timeline with what seems like extra time for each step!

Read the Program Announcement: I am a bit of a broken record when it comes to telling PIs to read the program announcement, so I was so excited when Dr. Adkins, dare I say, harped on this point as well!

Watch the program-specific webinars: Grant-making agencies oftentimes offer applicants a variety of resources to help them hone their proposals for the program. Be sure to review all of these resources, including any webinars the agency has produced.

Contact the Program Officer: Dr. Adkins was a very welcoming example of a Program Officer, but she impressed on us the importance of discussing your project and proposal with a PO to make sure it's a good fit and to get feedback from the PO.

Respond to evaluation criteria: Before you begin work on your proposal, make sure you have identified how your proposal will ultimately be evaluated by reviewers and be sure to center those criteria in the case you're making in your proposal.

Remember your audience: Know who is going to review your proposal. Dr. Adkins made the point that for the NEH you will have experts in your field reviewing as well as those outside your field, so you need to write your proposal (jargon-free) for both.

Resources:

Dr. Judy Adkins Talk on NEH

Can We Talk? Contacting Program Officers - Bob Porter

The NIH K Grant

This week, ORDE hosted our 7th annual NIH K Grant Planning Seminar online. As always our faculty experts shared plenty of tips for those embarking on the journey of developing an NIH K Proposal. Below are some nuggets to bear in mind as you begin the process.

• Multiply your proposal development timeline by 1.5: As Dr. Amy Wachholz suggested, developing a K proposal takes way longer than you're probably expecting.
• Integrate your research plan, career development plan, and mentoring plan: The K is unique in that it's all about you and your potential: show reviewers how you will grow in each aspect of your plan and how they all fit together to get you to independence.
• Write your application so it's broadly understandable: Make sure all the reviewers will get your research (some may not be experts in your area).
• Have a member of your mentoring team that specializes in every part of your project: For every method, technique, and approach have a known expert on your mentoring team.
• Start applying for your R award three years into your K: Don't wait till you're out of money to look for your next grant. Some K awards will even let you keep your K funding when you get your R.
• Show that your career path is different from your mentor's: Make sure your reviewers know that you and your research are unique and innovative.
• Look up your study section and guess who will be your primary reviewer and cite them: The NIH posts their study section members; you can figure out who will likely be assigned to be primary on your application so cater your writing to them.
• Include a timeline visual: It's not enough to write out your plan; put together a visual that shows your timeline.
• The best time to apply for a grant is when you've just published something great: Once you've published, the field will be abuzz with talk about your great work, so seize on that!

Always remember that the K grants are meant to take an early career scholar with lots of potential and provide them the mentoring and career development they need to be an independent researcher, which for the NIH means you are competitive for an R01 or like award. In all things, show them that you have that potential and that you will be successful with a little help from your K!

Resources:

2021 NIH K Grant Planning e-Seminar - ORDE 

Research Career Development Awards (K kiosk) - NIH

Ins and Outs of NIH Career Development Awards - Gregory Sempowski (Duke)

Abstract: The Window to Your Proposal

Writing an abstract is hard. I have read many an abstract for scholarly articles and for grant proposals, those for grant proposals tend to be worse than those for articles. I attribute this to experience. Most researchers have written more scholarly articles than they've written grant proposals. They've certainly read more articles than proposals. But, I also think part of the problem is that we don't often think about how these abstracts should differ. Other scholars use publication abstracts to get a gist of what the article is about to decide if they want to read the entire article. Grant reviewers read an abstract slightly differently. Their question going into the proposal isn't really, "Do I want to read this proposal?" but more "What does this PI want to do and why?"

Unlike in an article, you do not have results yet. Whereas describing your results in a publication abstract is important, in a grant proposal, you just want to bring your reviewer up to speed. You want them to understand what you want to do so that they can better navigate and assess your proposal.

Hopefully that's enough to convince you to give your grant abstract some serious thought. To help you with this, I thought I'd identify some dos and don'ts (in reverse order) for your abstract based on the errors and strengths I commonly see in proposal abstracts.

Don't

• Make the intro to your proposal and the abstract the exact same language. Remember, the reviewer who just read your abstract will now start reading the body of your proposal. It looks sloppy if you just do a cut and paste, even if it's using brilliant prose
• Give extraneous details/examples: remember you don't have much room. Make every word count
• Include an equation: Even if it's the key to your entire project, an equation cannot be fully explained in an abstract to justify its use
• Use jargon/excessive acronyms: Remember, even if your proposal has to be very technical, the abstract should still be understandable by the layperson

Do

• Describe the problem you're trying to address and how bad it is
• Give a summary of your project and your goals
• Include your hypothesis
• Describe what's been done / note preliminary results
• Show how your project will help solve the problem
• Follow any guidelines that the agency offers for abstracts

Resources

How to Write a Compelling Grant Abstract - Elena Kallestinova (Yale)

Crafting a sales pitch for your grant proposal - Robert Porter