What can grant funding do for you ?

1. Sarah L. Keller Associate Dean for Research Activities for the College of Arts and Sciences University of Washington, Seattle One of my tasks is to assist groups of A&S faculty who are applying for large, interdisciplinary grants. What can grant funding do for you? • Your summer salary • Your travel to conferences or archives • Increase your research productivity and scholarly stature • Grad student funding • Postdoc funding • Your salary buyout from teaching • Hosting individual speakers at UW • Hosting workshops and conferences at UW

2. What can grant funding do for your department? • Attract impressive postdocs and grad students. • Increase your department’s funding because a portion of your grant’s indirect costs return to the department that administers the grant. • Raise your department’s national profile as a research unit. • Raise your department’s stature within the Provost’s Office, which uses funding as one metric to evaluate departments. • Enable some types of collaborative projects that would otherwise not go forward. • NOTE: The Philosophy Department’s last 10-year review noted special opportunities for funding in: - environmental philosophy - philosophy of science Other areas that have relatively strong funding opportunities are science studies and medical ethics.

3. Where might faculty in Philosophy apply for funding? (Results of a Google search) • National Endowment for the Humanities www.neh.gov/grants/index.html • American Philosophical Society http://www.amphilsoc.org/grants • John Templeton Foundation www.templeton.org/what-we-fund/grant-search/results/taxonomy%3A5 • Spencer Foundation (Philosophy in Educational Policy) www.spencer.org/content.cfm/philosophy-in-educational-policy-practice • NOTE: The Philosophy Department’s last 10-year review noted special opportunities for funding in: - environmental philosophy - philosophy of science Other areas that have relatively strong funding opportunities are science studies and medical ethics.

4. Who might fund Philosophy of Science research? • • NSF Science, Technology, and Society (STS) program www.nsf.gov/pubs/2012/nsf12509/nsf12509.htm, due Feb. 1, Aug. 1 annually • “STS considers proposals for scientific research into the interface between science (including engineering) or technology, and society. STS researchers use diverse methods including social science, historical, and philosophical methods. They will produce outcomes that address pertinent problems and issues at the interface of science, technology and society, such as those having to do with practices and assumptions, ethics, values, governance, and policy.” • The program … especially welcomes proposals that focus on: • How ethical issues and values interconnect with science and technology, and how norms and values institutionalized in science and technology engage with society. • STS provides the following modes of support: • • Standard Research Grants and Grants for Collaborative Research, • • Scholars Awards and Postdoctoral Fellowships, • • Doctoral Dissertation Research Improvement Grants, • • Conference and Workshop Support

5. Where might you apply to fund Philosophy of Science and any ethics research related to sciences? (Slide 2) • NSF Ethics Education in Science and Engineering (EESE) www.nsf.gov/funding/pgm_summ.jsp?pims_id=13338 Opportunity for exciting curriculum and program development: “… the primary focus is on improving ethics education for graduate students in NSF-funded fields, [but] the proposed programs may benefit advanced undergraduates as well.”

6. Where might you apply to fund bioethics scholarship? • Gates Foundation www.gatesfoundation.org/grantseeker/Pages/default.aspx • Greenwall Faculty Scholars Program greenwallfsp.org “The Greenwall Faculty Scholars Program in Bioethics is a career development award to enable outstanding junior faculty members to carry out original research that will help resolve important policy and clinical dilemmas at the intersection of ethics and the life sciences. • National Institutes of Health http://grants.nih.gov/grants/oer.htm • National Science Foundation www.nsf.gov/funding/ • Robert Wood Johnson Foundation www.rwjf.org/programareas/

7. What about foundations? (e.g. Mellon Foundation) • Federal agencies bring in indirect costs, which is good for your department. You can also investigate funding from foundations, which are not likely to bring in indirect costs, but may still be beneficial to your research.

8. Where do you even begin? Start early. 1. Will you apply solo, or with collaborators? Need a subaward? 2. Make a list of your deliverables. A manuscript? A conference? A new course? A policy paper? 3. Write a budget. Have a fiscal specialist look at it. Link to instructions and sample budget from Office of Research: www.washington.edu/research/guide/budget.html Link to UW numbers for indirect cost rates, tuition, benefits rates: http://collaborate.artsci.washington.edu/sites/dropbox/Shared%20Documents/Grants%20and%20Contracts/Grants%20and%20Contract%20Proposal%20Preparation%20Factsheet.htm 4. Write your proposal. Make it painfully clear what your activities will be in your work plan. Write for an audience of tired reviewers who previously read 15 similar proposals. 5. Get help from colleagues who have funding. They can read your proposal and help you navigate the system. 6. Did you miss the deadline? Try at next cycle (≥4 mo.)

9. Your program officer is a valuable resource. Call the program officer in charge of awarding funds at the agency to which you are applying. Talking to a program officer is very different from talking to an editor at a journal. The program officer wants to talk to you about your good ideas – that is his/her job. The better your proposal turns out to be, the better he/she looks when explaining how money was spent.

10. Why bother writing a grant proposal if the probability of being funded is not high? • The funding rate for the NSF program that funds me is 13%. I apply many places to land one grant. I also expect to try, and fail, and try again. It is worth it for me. • You will get feedback from experts on your work. • If you don’t get a grant, then: – Turn your proposal around and submit it to the next round at the same agency, or somewhere else. – You will have done the conceptual groundwork toward the completion of a project and publication (This is a huge advantage of the field of philosophy over fields in experimental natural science!)

11. Why not write a grant proposal? • I have no time. • I have no training in grant writing • I don’t know how to write a budget. • I’ve never navigated Fastlane/Grants.gov or UW’s SAGE or e-GC1 forms • No grant agency would fund my work. • I’ll have to find a staff person who can help me assemble my proposal. • I’ll have to find a staff person who can help compile end-of-year summaries of my spending for reporting purposes. • I don’t need grant funding in order to get tenure. Same constraints as natural sciences. Maybe, maybe not. Maybe, maybe not. I assemble my own. UW’s Grants and Contracts office does this for you. Advantage or disadvantage?