Spring Break
Seminars simplify grant filing
Nick Veronin
Issue date: 1/24/07 Section: News
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The San José State University Foundation will host the first of four workshops this semester aimed at giving SJSU faculty and staff the tools and know-how they need to produce effective grant proposals and get the research money they are after on Jan. 31.
The foundation, a non-profit corporation in its 75th year, hosted the workshop series for the first time last semester and plans to continue the workshops in semesters to come, said Jerri Carmo, the foundation's deputy chief operating officer.
Carmo said the foundation acts as a kind of intermediary between businesses, government agencies and other organizations that provide the university with grants. The idea is to help speed the process of submitting grant proposals and receiving grants among other things. Carmo said that last year the foundation helped bring in over $62 million in grants to SJSU.
In order to get grants one must first draft a grant proposal, a process that Carmo said can be tricky due to formatting technicalities.
"We provide specialized business services … and a flexibility in administration and transactional types of activities," Carmo said.
Carmo said sometimes the business end of submitting proposals can be very arduous. The foundation provides services designed so researchers can focus on their projects rather than administering to them.
Emily Allen, professor of material and chemical engineering, was awarded a $367,644 grant in 2004 from the National Science Foundation. That money was used to purchase a scanning electron microscope for researching nanotechnology, technology that deals with the manipulation of individual atoms and molecules.
Allen said that creating a grant proposal is a process that could take several months since it isn't always easy to effectively present one's thoughts on paper and because grant organizations are very picky about the formatting of proposals.
"If you do it right, you spend a few hours a day for several months pulling together ideas and articulating ideas," she said. "Near the end there are a lot of details you have to get in and everything has to be in the right format exactly how they want, and the (SJSU) foundation helps a lot with that.
The foundation, a non-profit corporation in its 75th year, hosted the workshop series for the first time last semester and plans to continue the workshops in semesters to come, said Jerri Carmo, the foundation's deputy chief operating officer.
Carmo said the foundation acts as a kind of intermediary between businesses, government agencies and other organizations that provide the university with grants. The idea is to help speed the process of submitting grant proposals and receiving grants among other things. Carmo said that last year the foundation helped bring in over $62 million in grants to SJSU.
In order to get grants one must first draft a grant proposal, a process that Carmo said can be tricky due to formatting technicalities.
"We provide specialized business services … and a flexibility in administration and transactional types of activities," Carmo said.
Carmo said sometimes the business end of submitting proposals can be very arduous. The foundation provides services designed so researchers can focus on their projects rather than administering to them.
Emily Allen, professor of material and chemical engineering, was awarded a $367,644 grant in 2004 from the National Science Foundation. That money was used to purchase a scanning electron microscope for researching nanotechnology, technology that deals with the manipulation of individual atoms and molecules.
Allen said that creating a grant proposal is a process that could take several months since it isn't always easy to effectively present one's thoughts on paper and because grant organizations are very picky about the formatting of proposals.
"If you do it right, you spend a few hours a day for several months pulling together ideas and articulating ideas," she said. "Near the end there are a lot of details you have to get in and everything has to be in the right format exactly how they want, and the (SJSU) foundation helps a lot with that.
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