On October 6th, 2022, the Crow team traveled to Boston, MA to present a grant writing workshop at the annual ACM Special Interest Group for Design of Communication conference, SIGDOC 2022. We were excited to be back at SIGDOC this year– especially in a non-virtual capacity!
Our workshop, titled “Grant Writing: A Heuristic for Ethical Collaboration,” outlined collaborative grant writing strategies and provided attendees with a framework they can customize for different research, teaching, and industry contexts. Our workshop facilitators included Dr. Hadi Banat, Dr. Bradley Dilger, Anuj Gupta, Dr. Michelle McMullin, Dr. Aleksandra Swatek, and Shelton Weech.
The Crow team gave an overview of the elements of grant writing: research, networking, evaluation, drafting, reviewing, submission, and follow-up. Within this framework, we discussed what we think of as the hidden curriculum of grant writing– the documents, genres, and relationship building that isn’t always visible to students and faculty writing grants for the first time. Some of the topics we covered included pre-award and grant funder communication strategies, budget design, and letters of support.
What we learned
Though the workshop’s initial focus was on the process of grant writing, there was significant interest in teaching grant writing. Attendees requested pedagogical materials members of our team use in their own teaching practices such as syllabi, course readings, and assignments. Our hallway and lunch conversations often returned to sharing these resources for teaching grant writing. This interest sparked conversations within our team about lessons or tools we might develop with undergraduate and graduate grant writing courses in mind. Sharing new resources for classroom teaching is in the works for CDW projects in the coming months. In the meantime, Crow researchers are always willing to chat, share materials, or join your classes to talk about elements of grant writing. If we can help, email us at collaborate@writecrow.org or tag us on Twitter @writecroworg.