Announcement
of Funding
2008 Global Change Student Research Grant Competition
Proposals due by 5 p.m. Friday, February 22, 2008
Submit single-sided original with signed cover sheet plus 6
double-sided copies to:
Center for Global Change and
Arctic System Research
306 Akasofu Building (International Arctic Research Center)
(see http://www.cgc.uaf.edu/organization.html
for the mailing address
Download Information & Checklist as .pdf
Download Proposal Cover Sheet as .pdf
The Center for Global Change and
Arctic System Research (CGC) was established in March 1990 to
serve as the focal point at the University of Alaska Fairbanks (UAF) for
developing, coordinating, and implementing interdisciplinary research and
education related to the role of the Arctic and Subarctic in the Earth system,
and to stimulate and facilitate global change research in this region. The
Center broadly defines global change research to include the observation and
study of the processes, interactions, and feedbacks among the components of the
Earth system (atmospheric, oceanic, hydrologic, ecologic, and human) in both
the past and present, in order to anticipate future changes, develop effective
responses to change including the means for sustainable management of resources
and ecosystem services, and to ensure societal and cultural viability and
adaptation over the long term.
The Global Change Student
Research Grant Competition, sponsored by CGC in partnership with the Cooperative Institute for Arctic Research (CIFAR) and the International Arctic Research Center (IARC), provides support to students for research related to global change with an arctic or subarctic focus presented in an interdisciplinary context. Initiated in 1992, this competition is designed to give students experience with proposal writing and the peer review system as practiced by science funding agencies. Applicants
must have graduate or undergraduate status in a degree-granting program at UAF
at the time the research will be conducted. The proposed work may involve the biological, physical, and social sciences and engineering, but students must articulate the relevance of their proposal to global change or its effects upon arctic or subarctic processes, ecosystems, and/or societies. Applicants may submit only one proposal each year.
Applicants should request a start date of no earlier than 1 July 2008. Proposals will be accepted for 1 or 2 year durations with budgets up to $5000 per year. Year 2 funding will be contingent on the student submitting a satisfactory progress report. In selecting successful projects, priority will be given to first-time awardees. Awards will be announced in early May 2008.
Guidelines for Preparing a 2008 Global Change Student Research Grant Proposal
Each proposal (the original plus 6 copies) that is submitted for funding consideration by the Center for Global Change for 2008 must include the following elements in this order:
Following is a brief description of the 6 elements of a full proposal. Items 2-5 should be page numbered consecutively with the student's name in the header or footer of each page. Each page should have one-inch margins all around. Proposals do NOT need to go through UAF's Office of Sponsored Programs (OSP). Both the electronic and paper copies of the proposal must arrive at CGC by 5 p.m. on February 22, 2008.
1.
Signed Proposal Cover Sheet: Cover sheet (form provided) should be signed by the student applicant and the student's graduate advisor or undergraduate faculty sponsor (make six photocopies of the completed, signed cover sheet to go with the six proposal copies). In signing the proposal, the UAF
faculty member indicates that he or she has reviewed the student proposal prior
to submission and agrees that the proposed research is feasible and that he/she
will provide supervisory guidance. The advisor/sponsor should provide the name, unit and phone number of the fiscal officer who will process the award if the proposal is funded.
2.
Project Narrative (6 page limit including all figures and tables): Proposal narrative should be single spaced in no smaller than 11 point font and each page should be numbered and have student's name in header or footer. Use color copies if color is important for proposal reviewers. The project narrative should include the following items:
-
Abstract
(300 words or less): Provide a brief summary of your
project.
- Justification and Need (2 page limit): In this section, you should clearly discuss the problem or need that you propose to address, how it is related to global change or its effects in the Arctic and/or Subarctic, and the relevance of this research to other academic disciplines and endeavors. For example, an engineering student might submit a proposal to develop an energy efficient blast freezer design, by connecting the need for such a freezer to the increasing loss of permafrost traditionally used to store foods in rural arctic communities. He might include background material on the degradation of permafrost due to warming temperatures and how models predict an increase in this trend; how other storage alternatives are prohibitive because of high energy costs; that the potential lack of storage threatens subsistence lifestyles where foods are harvested seasonally and stored for long periods of time; and how abandoning these native foods could have negative health and social effects. Pertinent background material should be fully cited.
-
Objectives
and Approach: Discuss the specific
objectives of the project preferably in terms of the hypotheses to be
addressed. Indicate expected results at yearly intervals and at the end of the
project. Explain the conceptual approach for achieving objectives
and the methods to be used in sufficient detail that feasibility can be
evaluated by reviewers.
-
Applicants should mention all proposals they have previously submitted to this competition (funded or not) and discuss the relationship, if any, of the current proposal to any of these prior submission(s). Proposals from applicants that fail to acknowledge a prior submission may not be reviewed. Copies of prior related proposals and reviews will be provided to one or more reviewers, so students are strongly urged to address prior reviewers' comments if resubmitting. In addition to responding to panel and reviewer comments from the prior year, students should carefully review their current submission for overall clarity and adherence to the competition guidelines.
3.
References Cited (no page limit): Reference information is required. For citations within the text use author name(s) and year of publication (Roberts, 2002; Smith and Jones, 2005). The "References Cited" section should be sorted by last name, then year. References should be in a consistent format and must include the names of all authors in the same sequence in which they appear in the publication, the article title, book or journal title, volume number, page numbers, and year of publication. Citations with more than three authors can be abbreviated by using "et al." for authors beyond the first two. If you have more than one reference by the same author(s) and year, you can distinguish between them by using letter indicators (such as "a" and "b") after the year both in citation and in the "References Cited" list. Check that each citation in the text is included in the "References Cited" section, and vice versa.
4.
Project Schedule, Budget Table, Budget Justification, and Other Support (2 page limit): Provide a simple project schedule (such as a Gantt chart) that includes both project milestones and budget expenditures.
Include a budget table that shows proposed expenditures for Year 1 and Year 2, grouped under the following categories: salary, travel (specify foreign vs. domestic), services, and supplies (see the last page of the .pdf file of this announcement for a sample budget table). The table should include only those items requested through this proposed student grant, and totals should not exceed $5000 per year. Awards cannot be used for student tuition and awards for travel are generally restricted to either necessary field work or for presentation of research results at a national meeting. Travel expenses must specify destination and be itemized (e.g., airfare, lodging, per diem). No indirect costs (overhead/F&A) may be charged. All budget items should be rounded to the nearest dollar.
Explain in a brief budget justification section how specific expenditures will facilitate the proposed research.
An additional paragraph or table is requested that shows all other sources (current or pending) of project or graduate support such as teaching or research assistantships, and grants to the faculty advisor.
5.
Vitae for Principal Investigator(s) (1 page limit per student investigator): Student vitae should include name, contact information, education, teaching and other relevant experience, awards and honors, relevant presentations and publications. The "Proposal Writer's Guide" (below) provides one example.
6.
An electronic version of items 2-5: An electronic version of your complete proposal must be submitted in addition to your original plus 6 copies. You may put the file(s) on a CD and submit the CD along with your paper copies, or e-mail the file(s) to susan.sugai@uaf.edu. Both paper and electronic versions must be received by the submission deadline.
Proposal
Evaluation Criteria
All proposals will be prescreened by a subset of the CGC scientific steering committee for relevance to the competition. Consideration will also be given to the degree of compliance with proposal guidelines and overall presentation (coherence, correct English usage, absence of typographical and citation errors). Proposals remaining after this screening will be sent out for review by UAF faculty and other professionals. The following criteria will be used for proposal evaluations with approximate weighing factors:
1. Scientific
and technical merit of the proposed research. (30%)
2. Stated
relevance to global change or its effect upon arctic or subarctic processes,
ecosystems, and/or societies. (30%)
3. Feasibility
of the proposed research as written. (30%)
4. Presentation
of proposed research in an interdisciplinary context or demonstration of
relevance beyond a single discipline. (10%)
A proposal review panel will be assembled to assist the Center for Global Change in making funding decisions. Depending upon the number of proposals received and the amount of available funding, proposals receiving lower reviews may not be considered by the review panel.
Questions ?
For help getting started: The "Proposal
Writer's Guide" published by the University of Michigan has useful background
information on preparing research proposals. See:
http://www.research.umich.edu/proposals/pwg/pwgcontents.html
For more specific questions, contact Susan Sugai by email or
by phone at 474-5415. Examples of previously funded proposals are available for review in 306 IARC (ask for Barb).
Download Information & Checklist as .pdf
Download Proposal Cover Sheet as .pdf