Jackson State University’s Department of English will create a grant writing resource and training center to help faculty members from historically black colleges enhance their skill in developing proposals for funded research and programming.
Department of English awarded $443,178 to establish HBCU grant-writing program
Jackson State University’s Department of English, Modern Foreign Languages and Speech Communication has received a National Science and Foundation (NSF) grant in the amount of $443,178. The funds will go towards establishing a virtual proposal development center (VPDC) to support small and mid-sized Historically Black Colleges and Universities (HBCU) by providing guidance to faculty at participating institutions in pre-proposal activities, including identification of appropriate funding opportunities and development of research concepts.
The flagship HBCU announced the program last month, which will be funded by more than $443,000 awarded by the National Science Foundation, which is an off-shoot of a five-year grant writing academy the school established to assist JSU faculty in grant writing support.
The current grant is designed to translate the lessons of the Academy to an online grant writing program for small and mid-sized HBCUs. The project aligns with the goal of the HBCU undergraduate program to provide assistance to its community to increase faculty research capacity. The project’s potential for transformative impact is based both on its uniqueness as an approach to supporting small, resource-impoverished institutions and on the promise it offers to increase collaborations between scholars at different institutions. The structure of the project will also encourage collaborations across science, technology, engineering and mathematics disciplines.
Proposal submitted by JSU faculty through the grant writing Academy have been awarded more than $5 million, with 16 percent of proposals from current academy participants and 42 percent of grant proposals written from academy graduates having been accepted for funding.
