Objective. To fill the gap in grant writing training in pharmacology graduate education using an activelearning strategy. Design. Graduate students wrote subsections of a grant according to NIH guidelines. Students revised their applications based on multiple rounds of critiques from professors and peers throughout a semesterlong scientific writing course. Assessment. Prerevision and postrevision grant drafts were graded. Students were provided with questionnaires assessing their perception of the process. To determine the impact of feedback on the proposals, the quality of the pre/postrevision drafts was assessed by professors who were blinded and unaffiliated with the course. Conclusion. Student grades improved significantly upon resubmission. Perceptions of the proposals by blinded faculty members favored revised submissions based on multiple criteria. Survey feedback indicated an increase in student confidence in grant writing ability. The results of 3 independent measures demonstrate that intensive feedback on scientific writing improved the quality of student proposals.Keywords: grant, NIH, writing, graduate, active learning
INTRODUCTIONWriting is essential for academic and scientific success and the dissemination of scientific findings. Writing and revising a grant application or manuscript helps students learn the research process, 1 solidifies the goals of future experiments, enhances awareness of recent research breakthroughs in the field, and places pilot data in a broader context. Manuscript writing, characterized by theme-centered, expository, dispassionate prose of scholarly pursuit, is markedly different from successful grant writing. The latter is characterized by a projectcentered approach and a persuasive, personal tone conducive to addressing the service goals of the sponsor. Graduate students need critical feedback during this process as they can struggle to frame their research plan and findings in a manner that highlights the relevance and contribution of their work. Junior scientists are often encouraged to provide drafts of grant applications to senior colleagues so flaws in scientific rationale, interdependent specific aims, lack of critical preliminary findings, and unclear prose can be addressed before submission. Generally, the only grant writing training graduate students or postdoctoral fellows receive is from assisting their mentor with his or her application, or possibly in writing their own fellowship proposal. The introduction of an explicit grant writing course or training program would, therefore, benefit students in transition to independent research careers.The goal of the present study was to incorporate grant writing into a pre-existing research seminar course for students enrolled in the Graduate School of Pharmaceutical Sciences at Duquesne University. Many of these students may depend on scientific writing in their future careers, whether in industry, academia, or government research settings. Learning grant writing skills in graduate school may even bear on the student...