The Center for Excellence in the Arts and Humanities (CEAH) supports
and encourages ISU arts and humanities faculty in the pursuit of both
internal and external funding opportunities to further their research
activities and interests. Please contact Sandra Norvell at the Center directly with any
questions or concerns.
THE GRANTS OFFICE
171 Carver Hall
Sandra Norvell at 294-1594 or by email to
snorvell@iastate.edu
The Center for Excellence in the Arts and Humanities (CEAH) houses the Grants
Office, which provides support to faculty in the arts and
humanities in obtaining external research funding. CEAH supports faculty who engage in externally sponsored research
and programs, either as individual scholars or interdisciplinary teams of
scholars with many services. The Grants Office offers a wide range of
services as described below.
THE GRANT PROCESS What can CEAH do for you?
The Center offers access to funding opportunity information, provides
specialized searches for funding sources, and assists faculty with the budget
and financial sections of a proposal. The Grants Office can also
help faculty locate and
schedule meetings with collaborative research team members who may share
similar interests.
The Grants Office offers a broad range of pre-award and
post-award services. We will assist with the proposal's budget preparation,
assure that grant submission guidelines are met, and when requested, will arrange for
outside readers to review and edit the proposal according to the stated
guidelines. Complete proposals will be guided through the ISU GoldSheet and
grant submission process. Awarded proposals will be supported and monitored
through the Center during the post award period.
Why write grants? Grant writing carries with it advantages that are not always apparent at
the onset. Besides the necessity to show scholarly success to academic and
creative research peers, receiving grant funding supports research goals and
vital activities. Both grant seeking and the process of proposal development can
help faculty focus their scholarly/creative work and can encourage a
necessary articulation of why the research matters. Proposal
preparation provides an opportunity for faculty to think specifically about why their work
is relevant to their field and why those ideas should be disseminated to a
wider community. Of course, it must be said, the ideas being proposed must
capture the
imaginations of the grant review board members.
Grant writing can be seen as just one of the tools faculty involved in
scholarly/creative work use to build successful careers. Grant writers
who first
write internal grants and smaller external grants find that they
have a higher success rate when applying for larger and higher profile
awards. Competitive government grants and national foundations like to see
previous and continued institutional support, success on smaller seed
grant awards and a proven track record of successfully completed research.
Success begets success.
With this in mind, think of CEAH as a means to an end, a stepping stone. The
Center offers internal research grants to individual scholars, seed grants
for interdisciplinary teams of researchers, and small grants to senior
scholars who need only a small boost to augment their research funding.
Further, the Center can help researchers locate and secure external funding
and facilitate the necessary post-award requirements.
Identify Your Research Goals and Needs The Center will schedule a short meeting with you to discuss your research
and funding needs. At that time, we will help you identify ways to locate
possible external sources of funding and answer and questions you may have
about the funding process.
Before the meeting, please consider your research goals and needs carefully.
First, consider the best case scenario and decide what you intend
to research and how you intend to go about it. Hold those ideals in
your head and then assess what resources (including time) you will need to
accomplish your research. The Center can help with this process. We ask that
you take a moment and fill out a Funding Search Request form.
Send completed form to CEAH via email to Sandra Norvell snorvell@iastate.edu or through
campus mail to: CEAH at 171 Carver Hall (2060).
Start Early:
Successful grant writers plan months, even years ahead of time, and one
needs to consider that the 2-3 weeks immediately prior to a funding deadline
is frequently consumed with internal ISU office verification processes.
Plan to spend 2-3 months writing the proposal sections.
Consult this chart for some additional internal deadlines which you should keep in mind (chart in
pdf format)
RFP Guidelines:
Read the complete RFP carefully and follow it exactly. Proposals are
frequently eliminated before a first round review simply on these matters.
In some cases, electronic submission systems do not even permit the
acceptance and transmission of proposals if they do not meet the formatting
criteria. Look for templates that may be supplied before you start writing.
Contacting the Agency:
Questions of eligibility, project scope, and project suitability often arise
when reading RFPs and these questions frequently warrant a phone call or
email to an agency. If the agency handles sponsored funding and the project would be
processed through OSPA, then it is the responsibility of the PI to contact
the program officer directly. If however, the funding agency is a private
donor, company, or foundation, then the responsibility of first contact falls
with the ISU Foundation. If you are unclear which path your chosen funding
opportunity would take, please contact CEAH for clarification.(OSPA
clarification sheet)
Letters of Inquiry:
Letters of inquiry are treated similarly to grant proposal applications from
the University's point of view; that is, they must be submitted through
either OSPA using the internal GoldSheet system or through the ISU
Foundation. CEAH will help you edit, process, and submit these letters.
Write for your Audience:
Unless it is clear that your proposal will be reviewed by peers in your own
discipline, write for a more general audience. Many larger funding
opportunities are open to a number of disciplines, and review committees are
likely to include reviewers or program officers who are not familiar with
your discipline, the jargon used within it, or special terminology and
acronyms. As you write, keep asking yourself, Who is my audience?
Also, Will
this be clear to a non-specialist reader?
Proposal Revision:
Understand that the first draft will need revision. Allow enough time for
you to step away from the proposal writing process and return with renewed
energy and a fresh outlook. Be prepared to ask colleagues to read and
suggest revisions on the draft, and forewarn them so that they are not caught
by surprise. CEAH can offer assistance with locating reviewers, if needed.
Letters of Support:
If letters of reference are required, determine from the application
materials who may write on your behalf, and confirm their availability
early. Letters are due at the same time as your application. Be
sure that your referees have all the needed contact information and delivery
instructions.
The Budget:
Create a draft budget early on and plan to rework it several times before
completion. Budgets take time to create; they can not be a last minute
addition to the proposal. Budgets often influence the direction of the
narrative/project description text. Consider that any lapse in detail,
unrealistic cost estimates, and budget padding may result in your proposal
not being funded. Your budget narrative or budget justification, if required, should succinctly
justify the need for funds in each category. The CEAH office will help you
with this section.
Your CV:
Remember that your credentials are an integral part of the application.
Update your full Curriculum Vitae. Some RFPs require a condensed version of
the CV (e.g. 2 pages). Prepare this early according to the guidelines.
Deadlines:
Check deadlines carefully. Know that deadlines are not negotiable and that you must
meet those of both the external funding agency and the internal ISU offices.
All proposals processed through ISU's OSPA should be submitted to OSPA 4 business
days in advance of the agency deadline with a complete proposal, budget, and
all sponsor guidelines. For some specific ISU deadlines please refer to
this chart which is supplied by the offices of the VPRED and
OSPA offices.
