Showing posts with label research. Show all posts
Showing posts with label research. Show all posts

Tuesday, January 11, 2011

How good am I?

So, my institution awards money to faculty to pay them to write grants over the summer. By the program's guidelines, I'd be top priority if I applied and, assuming I had a generally good proposal, would likely receive the money.
The internal proposals are due Friday. I have good ideas, but nothing written. The internal proposal involves things like the budget and timeline of the external proposal (ugh! Isn't that what they are giving us money to take the time to figure out?). It would be good to receive some summer salary and it would be good to have a some external motivation getting me applying and writing over the summer.
If I feel in May (we're done May 4) like I felt in May with Dianthus, I would like doing some research.
But . . . . I've felt incredibly crappy recently. I was really afraid that I was going to fall asleep at 6:30 yesterday and the Mister would return from his evening class to find Dianthus fallen in a giant heap of tupperware and me incapably zonked out a few feet away. So yesterday I projected this feeling forward and realized that there was no way I could finish the thing (given that I have labs Tues. + Wed. and a Dr. appointment that involves three hours of driving on Thursday) by Friday, much less want to work on the actual grant come May.
But . . . today I am feeling good and think that surely I could put something together.
But . . . I just realized that is also involves a two-page CV and I don't have a current two-pager. That alone could take up too much time.

So . . . I'm writing you instead.
Do I go for it?
And, reminder, every time you update your complete CV, update your short version as well.

Friday, August 20, 2010

NASA contacts?

The institution I'm now at is part of a Space Consortium and as such receives funds from NASA. Because the last institution I taught at received major* NASA funding, I carry a coffee mug with NASA and my old institution logos. Somehow the chair of another dept. here saw this and after discussing with me my old institution's grant (to do summer science camps, train teachers and encourage undergraduates to do real research), decided that I should definitely submit a proposal for upcoming funds (actually the short term proposal is for a very small award to go to a NASA site and discuss applying for a bigger award) because "with all of your contacts it should be easy."

Of course, I have no NASA contacts.

However, I did learn that one of the NASA areas of interest involves the kind of work I do (invasives, effects of climate change on communities . . .) so I think I would like to apply for one of these awards.

But I have absolutely no contacts. E-mail me via the plant nerd if you have specific contacts. Comment if you have any other good ideas.

*2.7 million for an undergraduate teaching institution with 1,300 students counts as major to me.