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Office of Research Development

Proposal Writing Tools

Topics

Diversity, Equity , Inclusion and Access

Division of Inclusion and Equity: Comprises a number of initiatives aimed at creating a diverse community that welcomes people of different races, cultures, ages, genders, sexual orientation, religions, socioeconomic levels, political perspectives, abilities, opinions, values and experiences. Umbrella organization for the Men of Color Summit, Tiger Alliance, Emerging Scholars, Minority Student Success Initiative, the Charles H. Houston Center for the Study of the Black Experience in Education, and FIRST. 

  • Men of Color Summit: Brings together approximately 2,000 high school and college students, business professionals, educators, government officials, and community leaders from around the country. Emphasizes the importance of education, best practices, and strategies to increase high school and college graduation rates. 
  • Tiger Alliance: Helps empower, enlighten, and develop African-American, Latino, and Hispanic young men by emphasizing the importance of education and sharing best practices to increase high school and college graduation rates. 
  • Emerging Scholars: Aims to establish a college-going culture among students in families from South Carolina’s economically disadvantaged areas by providing academic enrichment, developing students’ leadership skills and increasing students’ college preparedness. 
  • Minority Student Success Initiative: Enhances the academic success and satisfaction of minority students. Provides programs, activities, and events to expose students to a variety of personal and professional networks. 
  • FIRST: Helps first-generation college students in all academic majors at Clemson succeed in college and attain their career goals. 
  • Charles H. Houston Center for the Study of the Black Experience in Education: Examines issues impacting the educational experiences and outcomes of African Americans, explores research-based best practices, and disseminates information regarding the African American experience in education. 

South Carolina Alliance for Minority Participation (SCAMP). Clemson participates in this Louis Stokes Alliance for Minority Participation funded by NSF. SCAMP provides mentoring and summer research opportunities for students from underrepresented populations (African American, Hispanic, Native American, and Pacific Islanders) who want to pursue a degree in the STEM disciplines. Clemson contact: Serita Acker.

Programs for Education Enrichment and Retention (PEER) and Women in Science and Engineering (WISE).Recruitment and retention support for underrepresented minorities and women in STEM disciplines. 

  • PEER SnapShot: recruitment event in which participants are able to attend a college class, have lunch and tour campus with a Clemson undergraduate, and hear presentations from Admissions/Financial Aid.
  • STEM Day: recruitment event held in the spring semester for high school juniors. This program is sponsored by WISE and PEER and allows participants to attend workshops conducted by Clemson professors and enjoy lunch with a Clemson undergraduate.
  • WISE Choice: recruitment event held in the fall semester for high school seniors and in the spring semester for accepted Clemson students. Participants attend a college class, have lunch and tour campus with a Clemson female undergraduate. They also hear presentations from Admissions and Financial Aid.

TIGERS ADVANCE: Innovative and systematic institutional transformation approach to reduce gender inequity and all forms of social injustice. Provides opportunities for all faculty to advance their careers and enjoy work/life balance as members of Clemson University. 

Center for the Recruitment and Retention of Diverse Educators (CRe2DE): Researches, designs, and implements the best strategies for recruiting and retaining diverse educators in the state of South Carolina, in conjunction with partners in designated high-poverty school districts and neighboring two- and four-year institutions of higher education. CRe2DE is creating infrastructure to support diverse educator development and building a clearinghouse of best practice resources to guide their early identification, preparation experiences, and professional culture of support. The primary goal of the Center is to create greater demographic parity between the state’s teacher workforce and its student population. For more information, contact Roy Jones or Faiza Jamil. 

Research Development & Grant Writing News

ORD subscribes to a monthly electronic newsletter from Mike Cronan and Lucy Deckard for faculty on how to compete successfully for research and education funding from federal agencies and foundations. The current issue and past issues can be found here.

Data Management Plan

  • DMPTool
    The DMPTool is a free, open-source, online application that helps researchers create data management plans. These plans, or DMPs, are now required by many funding agencies as part of the grant proposal submission process. The DMPTool provides a click-through wizard for creating a DMP that complies with funder requirements. It also has direct links to funder websites, help text for answering questions, and resources for best practices surrounding data management.

Department of Education (ED)

The Department of Education (ED) oversees federal regulations, programs, and initiatives involving the K-12 and postsecondary education enterprise.

Department of Energy (DOE)

The Department of Energy (DOE) supports a diverse portfolio of research that advance the science needed for revolutionary energy breakthroughs, seek to unravel nature’s deepest mysteries, and provide the Nation’s researchers with the most advanced large-scale tools of modern science.

National Endowment for the Arts (NEA)

The National Endowment for the Arts (NEA) supports funding for artistic projects in disciplines such as visual arts, music, dance, literature, design, theater, musical theater, opera, folk and traditional arts, and media arts including film, audio, animation, and digital art.

National Institutes of Health (NIH)

The National Institutes of Health (NIH) is the largest public funder of biomedical research in the world. NIH-funded research has led to breakthroughs and new treatments, helping people live longer, healthier lives and building the research foundation that drives discovery.

National Science Foundation (NSF)

The National Science Foundation funds research and education in science, mathematics, engineering, social science, and education.

Publicly Available Sample Proposals

Institute for Education Sciences (IES)
Search IES

Institute or Museum and Library Services (IMLS)
Search IMLS

National Endowment for the Arts (NEA)
Sample application narratives

National Endowment for the Humanities (NEH)
Sample proposals (full)
Search NEH

National Institutes of Health (NIH)

Research Grants
R01 NIAID Sample Applications and Summary Statements
R01, R03, and R21 NCI DCCPS Behavioral Research Program Sample Applications
R01, R03, R21, and R37 NCI DCCPS Epidemiology & Genomics Research Sample Applications
R01, R21, and R37 NCI DCCPS Implementation Science Sample Applications
R03 NIAID Sample Applications and Summary Statements
R15 (Academic Research Enhancement Award) Sample Applications and Summary Statements
R21 NIAID Sample Applications and Summary Statements
R21/R33 Sample Application and Summary Statement

Career and Training Grants
K01 Sample Applications and Summary Statements
K08 Sample Applications and Summary Statements
F31 Diversity Sample Applications and Summary Statements

National Science Foundation (NSF)
NSF Dissertation Research Proposal 1
NSF Dissertation Research Proposal 2<
Search NSF
Open Grants Public Database

U.S. Department of Education (ED)
Teacher Quality Grant
Strengthening Institutions Grant

Open Grants
View Open Grants

External Evaluators

External evaluators can be engaged during the writing of your proposal to formulate an assessment plan and implement it. ORD has previously worked with the following external evaluators:

Catherine Brawner, Ph.D., Research Triangle Educational Consultants
Catherine Brawner received her Ph.D. in educational research and policy analysis from North Carolina State University in 1996. Prior to graduation, she founded Research Triangle Educational Consultants and has performed independent evaluation consulting ever since. Dr. Brawner’s primary research and evaluation activities center on engineering education and the impact of policies and practices on educational outcomes. She particularly enjoys interviewing students individually or in focus groups to learn about their motivations for studying engineering.

Mariko Chang, Ph.D., Mariko Chang Consulting
Dr. Chang has a Ph.D. in sociology from Stanford University and was an associate professor of sociology at Harvard University from 1998 to 2007. During that period, she published work on occupational sex segregation across countries and the use of social networks for gathering financial information and began her work on the gender wealth gap. She currently works as an independent consultant with two specialties: (1) the wealth gap, especially as it pertains to women and minorities, and (2) external evaluation of grants that seek to increase faculty diversity and bring under-represented groups into STEM (NSF: ADVANCE, IGERT/NRT, LSAMP, Research on Gender in Science and Engineering).

Chien-fei Chen, Ph.D., University of Tennessee, Knoxville
Dr. Chien-fei Chen serves as the Director of Education and Diversity Programs and Research Professor for CURENT. She is also an adjunct faculty member in the department of sociology. Dr. Chen received her Ph.D. in Sociology from Washington State University. Her research in social psychology focuses on how the content and structure of social relations are mediated through social norms, networks, interpersonal communication and related psychological factors at both individual and group levels. Dr. Chen’s work is especially concerned with the mechanism, transmission and enforcement of social norms; and emphasizes the roles that social networks, norms and psychological factors have in the influencing of individual decision-making. Her research facilitates the investigation of the social and structural processes that motivate behavioral and psychological changes in relation to issues of energy and technology.

Tania Jarosewich, Ph.D., Censeo Group
Dr. Jarosewich leads the Censeo Group team in developing research and evaluation strategies for each client. She has led large-scale evaluations for state departments of education, school districts, grantmakers, foundations, small businesses, and nonprofit organizations. Her expertise includes evaluation of literacy; science technology, engineering, and math (STEM) education; gifted and advanced placement programming; school reform; educational assessment; capacity building; evaluation of collaborations and networks; and evaluation of organizational effectiveness.

Glenda Kelly, Ph.D., CEINT Associate Director for Assessment and Outreach, Duke University
Glenda Kelly is a research scientist and associate director for assessment and outreach for the Center for the Environmental Implications of NanoTechnology (CEINT), Pratt School of Engineering. She works with CEINT faculty and staff to define measurable educational objectives for activities related to communicating scientific discoveries emerging from Center research.

Scientific Graphic Artists

Ella Maru Studio
Dr. Alex Tokarev and Ella Marushchenko combine Ph.D.-level scientific knowledge with professional art design to produce eye-catching, self-explanatory scientific images and animations for articles, proposals, and books. Ella Maru Studio specializes in colored SEM and TEM images, engineering figures, animations, Table of Contents (TOC) images, and medical illustrations. Past and present clients include NIH, NSF, Princeton University, Yale University, University of Cambridge, MIT, Harvard University, ACS, and Imperial College London.

Mesa Studios
Mesa Schumacher holds a B.A. in physical anthropology from Stanford University and an M.A. in medical and biological illustration from Johns Hopkins School of Medicine. Schumacher specializes in aesthetic display of information, especially medical and scientific subject matter. Past and present clients include Keck Medical Center, Stanford University, University of Oxford, the Old Farmer's Almanac, Johns Hopkins Medicine, St. Jude Medical, Smithsonian National Museum of Natural History, Scientific American.

O'Reilly Science Art, LLC
Dr. Mary K. O'Reilly holds a Ph.D. in biological chemistry from MIT. Dr. O'Reilly has combined her passions for science and art into her own business where she specializes in journal covers, technical figures, website graphics, logos, posters, 2D, 3D, and interactive animations. Past and present clients include Duke University, University of California, Berkeley, MIT, Harvard Medical School, Memorial Sloan-Kettering Cancer Center, and Stanford University.

Sayo Studio
 Nicolle Fuller holds a B.A. in biochemistry from Lewis and Clark College and worked in an OHSU laboratory where she studied tropical parasites like leishmaniasis, African sleeping sickness, and malaria. Fuller specializes in nature and animals, health and medicine, and space and technology. Past and present clients include NSH, Yale University, Stanford University, UNESCO-IHE, American Association for Cancer Research, Science Magazine, USC, and Cambridge University.