Nontraditional Collaborative Strategies for Developing a National Science Foundation Motivation Proposal as an Early Career Researcher

• In Event: 51.064 - Grant Writing for Motivation Research: A Guide for Early Career Researchers

Abstract

In this presentation, my collaborator and I will discuss strategies for successfully applying for grants as early-career motivation researchers. We will focus on NSF grants, with a special emphasis on the role that collaboration plays in developing a strong grant idea and proposal.

One collaborative strategy I employed involved using methodological expertise to gain insight into ways of structuring successful NSF-funded grants. I approached writing my first successful $1.2 mil grant as Co-Principal Investigator by first serving as a methodologist. My initial designation was Senior Personnel when submitted, but that original proposal was rejected. I was also invited to be a methodologist reviewer for an NSF grant panel. These two experiences together led me to successfully negotiate my role as Co-Principal Investigator before the grant was resubmitted and ultimately funded. This set of experiences allowed me to receive structured mentoring for my developing grant-writing skill set. Following this successful grant-writing experience, I also was able to secure a $1 mil grant two years later as Principal Investigator.

I used a number of collaborative strategies to construct a compelling proposal as Principal Investigator. For example, I developed a working relationship with my collaborators prior to applying for the grant. By doing so, our research team became known by the university’s grants office, partnering school district, and school principals as researchers who are firmly committed to making schools places where all students want to be and want to learn. We therefore received notifications by both our university and district partners about upcoming funding opportunities that fit the type of work we were already doing in the schools. Due to our ongoing relationship with the school district, we were able to generate a grant proposal that entailed a detailed plan of work, included preliminary data on students of color we sought to support, and provided a strong case for the sustainability of the proposed research.

Another collaborative strategy I used was to work diligently to understand how the program officers viewed our proposed idea. For example, my department head and I visited the National Science Foundation together to speak with program officers in person. I shared the idea with several program officers while the department head took notes and later provided feedback in a one-on-one meeting. This experience offered me the chance to share ideas with two outsiders to consider ways of translating motivation-based research ideas into applied research questions that fit with NSF funding priorities. For example, we decided to generate motivationally supportive instructional strategies with teachers rather than simply presenting strategies for teachers in a professional development workshop and studying how students of color responded. Our research questions instead emphasized both an examination of our collaborative process with teachers, as well how, when, and why it made sense for them to use certain instructional strategies to support student motivation.

Specific writing strategies used in the first two pages of the NSF proposal were informed by the aforementioned collaborative strategies. These writing strategies are discussed in detail during the presentation.

Authors

• DeLeon Gray, Michigan State University

• Lauren H. Bryant, North Carolina State University