Off the Launching Pad: Stimulating Proposal Development by Junior Faculty

Abstract

The Challenge For research administrators, encouraging more proposal submissions is a constant challenge, and it is largely a game of numbers: The more proposals a given faculty member writes, more likely s/he will find success. The higher percentage of faculty who are actively developing proposals, greater growth in university's research budget. Published data tracking level of faculty activity in grant writing are scarce, but at many universities there is plenty of room for growth. A 1992 study of eight state colleges in New Jersey showed only 20% of faculty were actively engaged in sponsored research that year (Monahan, 1993). At Virginia Tech, less than 50% of combined research and teaching faculty submitted proposals in 2003, not a comforting ratio for a research university with ambitions to rise in national rankings. In pursuing goal of getting more faculty to generate more proposals, grants specialists are bound to trigger some degree of resistance, as inactive faculty definitely have their reasons for not writing grants (Miner et al., 2003). New faculty are a special challenge. Fresh out of graduate school and landing their first teaching positions, newcomers can be overwhelmed by their dual responsibilities to teach and publish. It has long been recognized that first years of teaching are highly stressful for new faculty, and that pressing demands of preparing new classes, advising and supervising students, all while adjusting to an entirely new environment at work and at home, are among reasons that many put research and scholarship on a back burner (Gibson, 1992). Focused on developing new course materials and building their bibliographies, and feeling as though they've been plunged into a sink-or-swim environment, many are chagrined to learn their employer has yet a third daunting expectation: sponsored research. Even those in science and engineering disciplines who made their way through graduate school as research assistants can often display only a dim awareness of how money to pay their tuition and stipends was obtained. Finally, as Freedman et al. noted more than two decades ago, research and scholarly activities are harshly competitive, resulting in a faculty culture that is a fairly grim affair, and is becoming increasingly so (1979). The danger here is that those who fail to establish effective habits of research and writing early in their careers probably never will (Creswell, 1985). Building on Recognized Needs Strategies to activate junior faculty in grant writing can build on findings from several major studies. First, these are early career professionals whose dominant concerns are advancement and promotion, and this can be an exciting period in their work lives as they strive to carve out an area of specialization, move up professionally, and make a name (Baldwin, 1990). Second, this group recognizes its own need for training. A survey of academics asked respondents what they believed would best develop young faculty members. Seventy-nine per cent of junior faculty participating in survey identified training as a priority need (Jarvis, 1991). Third, a considerable body of research supports contention that collegiality is most important single factor in faculty development. Sadly, participation in a supportive community of scholars, what historian Page Smith has called the pursuit of truth among friends, appears to be in short supply on many campuses, a deficit that junior faculty have identified as a significant barrier to their development (Jarvis, 1991; Smith, 1990; Turner & Boice, 1987). Taken together, this research suggests that to be successful a coordinated program to enhance proposal development should immerse new faculty in a series of workshops that feature interactions with senior faculty role models. Why workshops, as opposed to other modes of instruction? Briefly, it has to do with a workshop's superior capabilities to provide learning opportunities in several domains at once--knowledge, skills, and attitudes. …

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