Photo: Mandy Kong
The CHESS course “Writing successful project proposals” was held from 13-14 November 2019. A total of 15 participants joined the course.
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, four 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 within 2020-2021. The other participants felt that they had obtained the skills and competence which is necessary to develop draft proposals based on an own project idea.
The feedback from the participants was very positive, both during, directly after the course and in the course evaluation.
Text: Friederike Hoffmann, Nadine Goris and Mahaut de Vareilles