“Writing successful project proposal” course report

The CHESS course “Writing successful project proposals” was held from 20th to 21st November 2017. A total of 14 participants and 3 observers joined the course. The observers were research advisors from the Medical Faculty and the UIB Central Administration who wanted to learn about the course to establish similar courses at other faculties.

The main objective of the course was to enable early-career climate scientists to successfully apply for external funding of their research. Participants should gain knowledge about the different components of a project proposal, about different templates for project descriptions, and about the most relevant funding sources for early career climate scientists. They should obtain skills to present a project idea shortly and concisely, to develop the different components of a project description, and to draft a project budget. The newly generated knowledge should enable the participants to independently write a project proposal, and to identify relevant funding opportunities.

At the beginning of the course, eight participants presented their project ideas in a short oral presentation. Three of these ideas were chosen by the participants to be developed step by step into draft proposals in group work during the course. Results from group work were presented and discussed in plenary, and each group got feedback from the course leaders and the other students.

The participants, whose ideas were chosen to be developed into draft proposals during the course, felt confident to submit them as full project proposals in the near future. The participants, who could not realize own project ideas during the course, felt that they had obtained the skills and competence which is necessary to develop draft proposals based on their own project ideas.

The feedback from the participants was very positive, both during, directly after the course and in the online evaluation.

 

text: Friederike Hoffmann and Nadine Goris