Funding provides financial support for faculty members’ time, material, travel expenses, graduate student assistantships, postdocs, etc., to further their scholarship, as well as their ability to create societal impact and change people’s lives. R&CA team members have experience helping faculty develop effective funding proposals and can provide support across every discipline. We encourage faculty to contact us early in the proposal development process to discuss the level of CFE support available for your project.
A reviewer can only judge a proposal by what’s written on the page. Oftentimes, a faculty member has many ideas in mind that they want to include in their proposal, but given time pressure and space restrictions, it may be difficult for them to present their ideas in an order that makes sense to a reviewer. One way to increase the competitiveness of a proposal is to have other people review it before you submit the final version. The R&CA team has significant experience reviewing proposals through two different proposal development lenses: the lens of alignment with the proposal/fellowship call and the lens of flow, consistency, and ease of understanding. Note – while our team members have advanced degrees in different fields, reviews are not intended to provide subject-matter expertise. For a subject-matter review, we recommend that faculty reach out to colleagues in their field.
Our availability to help will depend on the complexity of the proposal, our other commitments, and the tightness of the proposal deadline. We encourage faculty to contact us early in the proposal development process to discuss the level of CFE support available for your project. We also encourage you to explore the wealth of resources available in the self-enroll Canvas courses associated with many of our workshop offerings.
For faculty working with CFE for the first time, a team member will schedule a 1-hour consultation prior to the review. This meeting gives us a chance to get to know you and understand how we can best support you. We will also discuss areas of concern to focus on in the proposal review, your proposal development timeline, and any questions you might have. For existing CFE faculty partners, a team member will schedule a 30-minute consultation prior to the review, as needed and if time allows.
We typically provide comments in the margins of the document, some tracked in-line suggestions for wording and clarity, and an overview email with summative feedback to help you prioritize revisions. We can address questions via email or schedule a follow-up consultation if time allows. Please note that, while our team members are experienced writers with advanced degrees, our reviews are not intended to provide subject-matter expertise. For a subject-matter review, we recommend that faculty reach out to colleagues in their field. Faculty should also review our feedback to ensure the editorial suggestions align with disciplinary terminology and with their intended meaning.
We are happy to offer multiple rounds of revision and consultation if time permits, so please contact us early in the proposal development process by filling out our Support Request Form. The level of support we can provide will depend on proposal complexity and deadline. A typical review timeline is:
Once we begin the review process, we can’t accept revised proposal documents without restarting the review timeline. We also can’t guarantee a comprehensive review of proposals submitted fewer than 7 business days before the faculty member’s preferred deadline.
We support faculty in planning their proposal or fellowship application so that it clearly aligns with the focus and scope of the funding opportunity. We review the information in the funding opportunity announcement with you and discuss how you plan to meet the requirements and how to effectively organize your proposed activities. We can provide example templates for timelines, charts, and checklists that will help you plan all the tasks needed to submit a proposal or application on time.
CFE provides consultations and workshops to help faculty navigate the use of AI. We also offer guidance on disclosing the nature and extent of AI use in funding proposals and scholarly products when requested or required. There are benefits and risks to using AI tools in writing. Faculty should refer to federal agencies’, academic journals’, and book publishers’ policies, and the guidance created by OU’s AI Governance Working Group to help inform decision-making and use of AI. AI tools are not a replacement for carefully reading the details of the funding announcement, understanding the published literature, or writing a section of a proposal. To learn more about AI pros and cons, check out CFE’s Generative AI Resource and OU AI Policy Quick Links.
To better help faculty who use AI writing assistance align with best practices, we encourage faculty submitting documents for review to provide a summary of AI use akin to the AI disclosure statements increasingly recommended by publishers and funding agencies. The summary must either affirm that no AI tools were used to create, review, revise, or edit any of the submitted content, or acknowledge and describe the AI tools used and how they were used.
The Center for Faculty Excellence (CFE), in collaboration with the Office of Research Services (ORS), will provide OU faculty resources for developing grant proposals and introduce ORS’s process in submitting proposals to external agencies. From developing an idea to submitting a proposal, this session will provide participants with a big picture of the proposal development process and of the support available to you at OU. This workshop is offered each semester.
Join OU’s Center for Faculty Excellence and Grants and Contracts Accounting (GCA) for a basic introduction to OU’s process for administering grants and contracts from external funding agencies and the available resources to aid you in this effort.
This workshop walks faculty through activities to articulate a fundable project idea in a focused, compelling one-page summary. These “one-pagers” are often required components of grant submissions, but they are also a great way to get feedback on your project idea, identify potential collaborators, and to share with program officers early in the proposal development process. This workshop is offered each semester.
This four-week workshop shows faculty new to submitting major grant proposals how to compose proposal narratives with the clarity, organization, and impact needed to win over reviewers at funding agencies. This workshop is offered once a year. Topics include:
This workshop series is for faculty who would like to develop a full 15-page NSF CAREER proposal during Spring semester in view of the annual July deadline. The Research & Creative Activities team will host five weekly sessions. Topics include:
