Biosciences Proposal Bootcamp: Structured peer and faculty feedback improves trainees’ proposals and grantsmanship self-efficacy

Abstract

Grant writing is an essential skill to develop for academic and other career success but providing individual feedback to large numbers of trainees is challenging. In 2014, we launched the Stanford Biosciences Grant Writing Academy to support graduate students and postdocs in writing research proposals. Its core program is a multi-week Proposal Bootcamp designed to increase the feedback writers receive as they develop and refine their proposals. The Proposal Bootcamp consisted of two-hour weekly meetings that included mini lectures and peer review. Bootcamp participants also attended faculty review workshops to obtain faculty feedback. Postdoctoral trainees were trained and hired as course teaching assistants and facilitated weekly meetings and review workshops. Over the last six years, the annual Bootcamp has provided 525 doctoral students and postdocs with multi-level feedback (peer and faculty). Proposals from Bootcamp participants were almost twice as likely to be funded than proposals from non-Bootcamp trainees. Overall, this structured program provided opportunities for feedback from multiple peer and faculty reviewers, increased the participants’ confidence in developing and submitting research proposals, while accommodating a large number of participants.

Winning a competitive research award decreases time to degree in bioscience PhD programs, but not for everyone

“…When it comes to winning competitive research awards, the stakes are higher for URM women because when URM women won awards, they graduated about a year faster, but when they did not win awards, they graduated about half a year slower and these findings did not hold true to the other identity groups measured. Since many students are never formally trained in how to write proposals for competitive awards despite the practical benefits (30)(31)(32), these results point to practical ways to streamline the student experience by providing grant writing training (24). This could also extend other research and practice on the positive relationship between specific graduate experiences and career trajectories (33).…”

“…Since many students are never formally trained in how to write proposals for competitive awards despite the practical benefits (30–32), these results point to practical ways to streamline the student experience by providing grant writing training (24). This could also extend other research and practice on the positive relationship between specific graduate experiences and career trajectories (33).…”

“…Our data were pulled from several data sources, queried in September 2022. We leveraged the Stanford Electronic Research Administration System (SeRa), a database which tracks external proposals, such as fellowships or grants, submitted and awarded to grant seekers at Stanford (including doctoral students); see (24) for more information about the database. We also To study the relationships between time to degree and funding acquisition, we considered the students' gender and URM status.…”

The potential benefits of costly applications in grant contests

“…For example, the models in this paper effectively assume a perfect correlation between scientists' productivity as researchers and their ability to compete in the grant contests -it assumes the best researcher is also the best grant-writer. The pervasiveness of discussions surrounding "granstmanship" amongst researchers suggests this is very likely not the case (e.g., Sauer and Gabbi 2018;Botham et al 2020).…”

Training Tomorrow’s Scientists: Embedding Professional Skills in the Physical Chemistry Curriculum with a Guided Grant and Laboratory Project

“…The ability to sell or influence others is a desirable skill according to employers, and grant proposal activities are appropriate parallels for the field of chemistry. Recently, there has been a push to bring persuasive writing into the chemistry curriculum through grant-writing activities. − These activities provide opportunities to practice persuasive writing, but they lack the follow-through of actually carrying out the proposal. Allowing students to pick a project that interests them, and providing them with the agency for their proposals, adds value to their projects.…”