3.00 Credits
Graduate students develop writing skills for proposals to secure funding in the life sciences, such as fellowships and grants, through demonstration, practice, and peer editing activities. Students develop their existing writing skills by improving their grammar, clarity, brevity, and precision, and learn to create a cohesive whole in their proposals by using structure and formatting. Students learn to create an advocate in their reviewer by selling themselves and their project, and by meeting the expectations and needs of the reviewer. This course addresses how to develop an over-arching logical flow to guide their proposal writing, followed by how to construct and write all the major parts of a proposal, including specific aims page, significance, innovation, broader impacts, research strategy, training plan, facilities and equipment, and biosketch. This course also addresses the use and construction of figures and tables in proposals, submission cover letter, and response to reviewer critiques. References, citations, and plagiarism are also addressed. May also be offered as GEN 8090.