Writing winning grant proposals is not a matter of luck or good fortune. Rather, it involves developing an innovative idea, followed by hard work combined with careful management of the overall writing process – from first conception of a core idea to finally pushing that “submit” button. Burggren’s interactive workshop is widely applicable to those in academics as well as administrators and staff in the Sciences, Arts, Social Sciences, Humanities, Engineering, Student and Academic Affairs, International Programs and many other student support areas. His end goal is to help you benefit from his own “hard-won” knowledge based on nearly 40 years of successful grantsmanship with both public and private agencies. Burggren starts his workshop by exploring the difference between grants and contracts and between public and private funding sources, and offers tips on how to find just the right match for your ideas with an appropriate funding source.

 

Burggren next describes important steps for putting together effective research teams and getting organized for writing the proposal. He emphasizes (repeatedly!) just how much time it will take you to write a successful proposal, and he gives useful suggestions for developing a budget, organizing the proposal, creating an exciting and appealing narrative, and then finally polishing the proposal and making it ever more attractive to reviewers. Burggren concludes the workshop with useful suggestions for rewriting and resubmitting previously submitted but unfunded proposals to ensure that you finally create a winning grant proposal.

 

Strategically placed throughout the workshop presentation are specific, concrete tips that have repeatedly proven effective in proposal preparation. Burggren concludes this workshop by emphasizing that it is not about writing a large number of proposals or expecting to win a grant every time you submit a proposal. Rather his goal is to help you write a sufficient number of successful proposals to enable you to achieve your professional goals.

 

Professor Warren Burggren is a Professor in the Department of Biological Sciences and Provost at the University of North Texas, USA. His research interest lies on developmental and evolutionary physiology. In particular, he focuses on the nexus of development, environment and physiology, and his long term goal is to understand the link between transgenerational epigenetics and phenotypic plasticity, and the implications they have for the performance of physiological systems.

 

Professor Burggren serves on the National Science Foundation Advisory Board and he has a remarkable record in securing highly competitive research grants (including major grants from National Science Foundation and Gulf of Mexico Research Initiative). He has published more than 250 articles, chapters, monographs and textbooks in comparative animal physiology. He is the Founding Editor-In-Chief of Ecological and Environmental Physiology (Oxford University Press).