Global Change GEOS/ECOL 578, Fall 2010

Research proposal - assignment guidelines

UPDATED OCT 22

EXAMPLE NSF PROPOSALS

note that these are 2-3x as long as yours should be, and there are formatting details specific to NSF, such as the letters indicating different subheadings. There are also required sections for NSF (broader impacts and results from prior support) that you are not required to include.

This one I just finished and submitted (recent climate change in Galapagos)

This one was successfully funded (paleorecords of drought from AZ caves)

These do not include budgets; they are too complex to be useful, and yours should be simple. You can use the following categories if it helps; also please note for how long your project will run (typical: 1-3 years).

salaries (for yourself, perhaps a technical assistant)
travel (for fieldwork or meetings)
analytical expenses (for lab-based measurements)
supplies (for field or lab work)
publication costs (for journals to cover page charges)

Assignment: identify an unresolved, original question within global change science, and within 10 double-spaced pages, propose a project to address it. (Note: this is NOT a term paper assignment, where you summarize existing knowledge on a topic.)

This is good practice for your future as a global change scientist! We are looking for a focused approach to a specific problem - not a description of how you'd solve all outstanding issues with several trillion dollars. You can choose an example from your field of research but please don't use a proposal you have written for another purpose, even if the format is different (see note below).

Proposal topic: anything related to global change. It should be broadly relevant to a societal or policy issue. Remember that it must represent an unresolved scientific issue, towards which your project will make an original scientific contribution. We strongly recommend that you meet with one of the professors to discuss your choice of topic.

Proposal goals:

• identify a particular unresolved scientific question, relevant to global change science and to society;
• describe the scientific background in sufficient detail to (1) motivate the proposed research question, and (2) show command of the subject and methods, and familiarity with recent relevant research;
• propose in detail a strategy to address this question (your method: experiments, observations, modeling, etc.);
• discuss the broader relevance of the proposed research to societal or policy issues (how will your answers be used by other scientists, decisionmakers, or policymakers

Proposal Format: The proposal should contain the following sections (the page lengths are a rough guide for how you should allocate your effort; the 10-page assignment refers to section 2 below):

1. A stand-alone Project Summary (1 page, single-spaced). The summary should be readable in isolation from the rest of the proposal, and should give a concise statement of the research question, the methods you will use to address it, and its significance. (In National Science Foundation grants, the project summary is made publicly available.)

2. Main Text (10 pages not including figures), with the following sections:

o An Introduction that gives sufficient background to motivate the research, states the research question to be addressed, and places it in scientific and societal context. If the proposal seeks to test hypotheses to answer the research question, the hypotheses should be framed here also (~2-3 pages, double-spaced);

o A Project Description of the proposed work (how you will address the problem, ~5-6 pages, double-spaced), and

o A Conclusion that describes expected products or outcomes from the proposed research and their significance, including scientific significance and how these outcomes might affect policy or societal issues. (~1-2 pages, double spaced).

3. Two to three Figures. These can be used to motivate the core question or hypothesis (perhaps using preliminary data or previously published data), depict experimental designs, study site locations (e.g. with maps), methods, or conceptual models, or show how the project will be organized. These should be specific to your proposed work, and not generic global change figures.

4. A budget. (~1 page)

5. A bibliography. (no page limit, also not included in the 10 pages of main text). Your proposed should draw on original scientific publications and not just websites, although high-quality websites can be cited. The paper should be fully referenced in scientific format — that is, not with footnotes but by the author’s name and year of the publication. Example: (Schlesinger 1999) or Schlesinger (1999) depending on whether the author’s name is used explicitly in the sentence.

Note that the project summary is 1 page single-spaced; the remaining lengths are based on double spacing. A typical NSF proposal runs 15 pages single-spaced plus the summary; yours will be a shorter version (we need the double-spacing for grading/comments).

The hardest part of this assignment is coming up with an original scientific question, and we urge you strongly to begin this process right away. In past years, some students have struggled to identify a real research question that is unresolved, and many have fallen back on the tried-and-true format of term papers that summarize existing research. PLEASE DO NOT DO THIS! Another direction that will lead to grief is to use this paper to propose a policy to "solve" an environmental problem without describing the scientific research needed to evaluate whether the policy is appropriate.

The key to determining whether you are on the right track is to ask youself, "What new product will be created as a result of the proposed project?" Is it a dataset or model that doesn't yet exist? A method or algorithm or instrument that, once developed, will be used to acquire data or information? In the past, difficulty with identifying an appropriate topic has led students to ultimately request incompletes to finish this assignment. Based on past experience, we will not grant such requests in the future. You can do this within a semester, but you should start early.

Deadlines: (with portion of grade indicated; project is worth 20% of total grade, or 20 points)

Sept. 30 : Draft project summary, 1 page single spaced (1 point). We'll look at this critically for your choice of topic and the scope of your proposed solution. This must include some scientific background, the question to be addressed, an indication of what methods will be used (experiments, observations, analyses, etc), and the broader societal relevance of your project. This should be a stand-alone document that summarizes your proposal. In the past, students have over-emphasized the background section at the expense of all others. To avoid this, make the background no more than half of the one page. (We fully expect that the project summary will evolve as you write the proposal; that's OK. We will use this as a way to gauge whether you are on the right track with respect to an original scientific question that has relevance and whether you have started to think carefully about your methods.)

Oct. 21 : One-page outline of full proposal, plus updated/edited 1-page project summary, plus key references (2 points). We'll use this to be sure you are on track for a good topic and also to assess whether you are giving reasonable consideration to all components of the proposal (including methods!).

Nov. 9: OPTIONAL — if you turn in a complete proposal by this date, we will comment on it and grade it for you by November 18; you can revise this and turn in the revision for your final grade. It must be 100% complete, with all figures and references in final format.

Dec. 2: Final proposal due (17 points).

A note on the budget requirement: don't worry about exact numbers, but do try to be thorough. Identify how long your project will take to complete, including write-up of results (typical: 1-3 years). Please budget by categories such as the following: salary (don't forget to pay yourself! How many months per year will you devote to this?), travel, analytical expenses (e.g. isotopic analyses at $10 per sample), equipment/materials costs, etc. Please do not budget by tasks (e.g. "statistical analysis of data," "sampling of forest biomass and analysis of nutrients," etc.). Presumably you will pay project personnel such as yourself, a grad student, and/or a postdoc to handle tasks, but these should be budgeted as salaries. This budgeting process is good practice for your future in science!

Important note on how this relates to other proposals you might be writing: Please do not turn in a proposal you have written for another purpose, e.g. for a student fellowship, NSF grant, or departmental requirement. If you are considering writing a proposal for another purpose, it is OK to use this assignment as a starting point for your other purpose. However, we want you to stick with our formatting guidelines. So, for example, an NSF research proposal is usually 15pp single-spaced, including figures - we will be happy to critique a shorter version of this. If you tell us that this is going to NSF eventually, we can probably help even more with particular comments. But please don't give us the twice-as-long version. Thanks.

We will grade on a combination of factors: Have you clearly identified the question? Have you demonstrated familiarity with the relevant scientific background? Are your methods appropriate to address the problem? Does it meet the formatting criteria we set out? Is the proposal well written – clearly explained, well organized, concise? Grammar, spelling, and usage are important! Are the figures appropriate and well designed? Have you identified the context in which your results will be useful – to other scientists and disciplines, to decision- and policy-makers?