• Grant Proposal Hints
• If You are Successful
• Some Reasons For the Success of the Fox Valley Math ILI Proposal in my opinion

Thanks to Mary Kay Abbey

1. If there is a preproposal screening, use it. The groups that do this are generally local DC folks and NSF employees. The NSF people remember the proposals and are amazed at how many PIs don't change anything before actually submitting.

2. Your proposal must be clear. The review panel does not always have the proposals before getting to DC. The reviewers are given a 20+ inch stack of paper to read in 2 and a half days. Be sure to state explicitly what you are going to do, what the audience is, how you will carry out your idea, and how you will publicize your results.

3. A little clarification of what you are going to do. Don't say you will solve all the problems students have. Give a broad general idea and then perhaps two specific class activities. Sometimes the whole project appears designed and then the reviewers wonder why they need any support.

4. Be sure to describe your intended audience. Include letter from the community if you are planning some special training for a group who will then be employed by these community leaders. Diversity of audience is looked for as is the impact on minorities. For you here, be sure to mention the audience members who are of American Indian descent.

5. Look over the resumes that are to be attached to the proposal. Generally they are quite awful looking. If there are five investigators, have someone go over the resumes and redo them in a similar format. Include pertinent information. It is not necessary to know that the investigators are happily married or not, healthy or not. If you wrote some papers back in the 1970s and nothing since, you may prefer not to mention them. Instead list current activities, presentations, courses, etc. Do your best to sell yourself as an educational innovator.

6. Try to collaborate with other schools in your area. This increases the impact of your project and then NSF feels they are getting more for their money.

7. Be sure to run the proposal through a word processor.

If You are Successful

• You will spend a lot of your time trying to achieve the goals of the grant, quite likely without any direct remuneration. (But your merit and chance for promotion are helped!)
• If you are purchasing equipment such as computers it may be advantageous to hold off the purchases while capabilities improve. At least for an ILI grant, the PI has responsibility and latitude to make changes if they are clearly for the benefit of the purpose of the grant. (If in doubt talk to your contact at NSF.)
• You may become involved in more grantsmanship in order to raise the matching funds.
• You have a lot of authority as the grant holder. Use it well, don't surrender it to people who have other motives or agendas.

Some Reasons For the Success of the Fox Valley Math ILI Proposal in my opinion

I and my Colleagues at Fox had appropriate experience for what we proposed, which was using "computer algebra systems" in several of our courses.

• I had gone to relevant meetings, short courses and workshops over several years.
• I had given talks introducing computer algebra systems to relevant groups.
• My colleagues had all used computers in significant ways; several of us had taught programming.
• We had already bought a few copies of a computer algebra system with campus money to do what we could.

These demonstrated both expertise and seriousness.

The Campus had a building project going on.

• This demonstrated community support for the campus.
• It provided a lot of the matching funds. Lab Mod also provided some.

We were timely. We were hip.

• What we wanted to do was consistent with ideas getting wide attention in college math education circles at the time.
• Attending some of the meetings helped provide appropriate buzz words and jargon language for the proposal.