Final Post...

First of all, many thanks to all of my classmates for their opinions and advice. This project certainly could not be what it is without all of your help. And special thanks to the MATRF staff for making yourselves so readily available; it is much appreciated.

So as the class ends it is quite impressive what we have to show for it. I'm very excited to see that I am well on my way to getting this whole thesis project started...for many reasons, namely graduation I must confess.

Even though I get to work with grants on a day-to-day basis what I tend to forget is that these are research based grants and there is a huge different among the different kinds of grants that are available. I think I was taking it for granted that the foundations with which I am most familiar are federal funders, and these do not constitute the only kind of funders available. It was interesting to see how the a research proposal vs. a non-research proposal compared. From this I definitely took away the creative aspect that is entirely overlooked in the development of research proposals. You do not have to think about creatively designing research proposals as the guidelines are already laid out for you.

Also, because there are different types of proposals, the amount of emphasis placed in each area or component of the proposal varies. I think the budget is still by far one of the most important components as most reviewers or grantors will be inclined to know how much you are going to spend and if it is feasible and appropriate.

Aside from proposal writing, the class really emphasized the need for many different people to read and review a proposal before submission. The only way to know if it is coherent and sensible is to have many different opinions as many times the reviewers and the number of reviewers is unknown. In the Greg Meyer's article we see how many different ways a manuscript can be read based on the type of audience. Everyone is looking for different things and you cannot appease the masses, but you can tailor the way in which you make your presentation in such a way that reaches all audiences on some level. If anything, the best you can hope for is your proposal to be reviewed and scored. If you achieve this, the possibility of input from the reviewers increases and the possibility of resubmitting at a later time may become an option.

I thoroughly enjoyed this class and certainly the deliverables are wonderful. It offered me another perspective and unhinged my singular view of research proposals.