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Tips for Securing Funding as a Graduate Student

Tips for Securing Funding as a Graduate Student . Courtney Hillebrecht Asst. Professor Department of Political Science UNL October 12, 2010. Securing funding is like the lottery: You can’t win if you don’t play. What is funding for? General graduate studies

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Tips for Securing Funding as a Graduate Student

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  1. Tips for Securing Funding as a Graduate Student Courtney Hillebrecht Asst. Professor Department of Political Science UNL October 12, 2010

  2. Securing funding is like the lottery:You can’t win if you don’t play. • What is funding for? • General graduate studies • Skill-building: methodological/language training • Fieldwork/data collection • Write-up • Where to find funding? • At UNL • Private programs • Government programs

  3. Examples of Private Funding • For fieldwork/data collection: • International Researches & Exchanges Board (IREX) Grants • Social Science Research Council • For write-up: • U.S.I.P.Jennings Randolph Peace Scholarship Dissertation Program • Belfer Center @KSG

  4. Examples of Government Funding • For general graduate studies: • NSF Graduate Research Fellowship Program • For skill-building/training: • NSEP Boren • FLAS (administered through home university) • For fieldwork/data collection: • NSF Dissertation Improvement Grants • Political Science • Law and Social Sciences • Fulbright Hayes

  5. Websites for Finding Funding Sources • APSA: • http://www.apsanet.org/content_16669.cfm • http://www.apsanet.org/content_11691.cfm?navID=444 • MSU: • http://staff.lib.msu.edu/harris23/grants/3polisci.htm • Yale: • http://studentgrants.yale.edu/search.asp • Rochester: • http://www.rochester.edu/college/psc/cp/funding.php

  6. Conference Travel • EVERY time you plan to attend APSA and/or ISA, you should apply for their travel grants.

  7. Residential Fellowships: Stipendiary and Non-Stipendiary • Consider traveling/being resident scholar at another institution. • New people, ideas, etc. • Funding equivalent to, or greater than, current grad stipends. • Could free up time from teaching/RA work. • Increasingly common: non-stipendiary fellowships.

  8. Writing a Competitive Grant Proposal (1: Clarity) • The first paragraphsentencemust explain what the proposal is about. • Your proposal is not the place for cliffhangers. Be clear and direct about: • Hypothesis you are testing • Methods you will use • Contributions

  9. Writing a Competitive Grant Proposal (2: Significance) • Use language that everyone can understand. • Readers are unlikely to be experts in your field, certainly not on your topic. • Clearly and succinctly identify your contributions. • Clearly and succinctly identify why you’re the right person for the “job.” • Convince readers that your topic is important! • For your discipline • For society at large

  10. Writing a Competitive Grant Proposal (3: The Budget) • Be as specific as possible; know the funding source and their priorities. • E.g. NSF prefers to fund fieldwork over conference travel. • Find the right price. • My experience: needed less for printing/copying/etc. than anticipated, but more for food/lodging and travel. • State Dept. has table of daily allowances. Use those figures in planning your budget. • Get help: • http://research.unl.edu/

  11. Writing a Competitive Grant Proposal (4: The Boring Bits) • Tailor your proposal for each call for funding, but don’t reinvent the wheel. • Edit, edit, edit! Proofread, proofread, proofread! • Include the appropriate literature. • You never know who is reviewing your proposal. • Address all of the required parts of the proposal. • Follow all of the directions. • Especially important for NSF.

  12. Writing a Competitive Grant Proposal (5: Persistence and Planning) • Plan ahead. • Get feedback before submitting your proposals. • Get the necessary IRB approval before you submit your proposal. • Could take up to 1 yr to get funds after you’ve won the grant. • Unlikely to win major grant first time around. • My experience with NSF: integrated comments from first try to win grant on second try. • Be persistent. • Expect to get rejected...but apply anyways. (Remember the lottery.) • Integrate comments from rejected grants to write better ones.

  13. Using Your Funding Wisely • Have a plan. Be prepared. • What do you want to do with this money? How will you do it? • This should be in your proposal. • But...be flexible. • Conducting research is a dynamic process. • Work with program managers/grant agencies if something changes (and you can almost guarantee it will).

  14. Final Thoughts and Miscellaneous Tips • Be proactive. • It’s your responsibility to get funding. • It’s also your responsibility to get your proposals into the grant agencies on time. • Be competitive. • Funds are tight. Your work is good. Convince the grant agencies. • Be creative. • How could you piece together two or three grants to make your research possible? • Be thick-skinned. • Don’t take it personally. Grants are competitive, but that is no reason not to apply.

  15. Good Luck!

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