PROVIDENCE, R.I. [Brown University] – Mentoring provides valuable support and guidance in many forms and at many levels, including among faculty. And the Population Studies and Training Center’s Summer Grant Writing Workshop aims to bring together earlier-career faculty who have limited prior NIH grant application experience with researchers at the Center who have received NIH funding in the past and have significant experience with the process.

Started in 2017 as part of the PSTC’s center grant from the National Institute of Child Health and Human Development (NICHD) of the NIH, the Summer Grant Writing Workshop supports junior and mid-career PSTC faculty associates who have not yet received funding from the National Institutes of Health (NIH) as a sole principal investigator. Senior faculty members provide guidance and feedback for them, assisting with budget preparation, helping to construct effective application components, and providing feedback on drafts.

"We are excited about the initiatives we have been able to launch in connection with our new Center grant," said PSTC Director Susan Short. "The PSTC has long been committed to supporting early career scholars at Brown. This workshop will provide targeted support for writing NIH grants related to population dynamics. Our staff and faculty have years of experience and complementary expertise, and through developing a dedicated workshop, we have created a mechanism for them to work together to support the next generation of population scientists."

Professor of Sociology Michael White serves as the lead organizer and mentor for the workshop and said that the program covers “a lot of in between territory in having people learn about the grant process and what they need to do over the long run to develop a grant proposal.” He views his role as one of helping to navigate the NIH process and facilitate communication with the PSTC grant staff to make sure all the pieces come together at the appropriate time for successful grant submissions. “We want to help any potential applicants to spend their energy on the scientific content while we help them with the other parts and remove some of that burden,” he said.  

Assistant Professor of Public Affairs and Sociology Jayanti Owens participated in the first Workshop in 2017. “The Summer Grant Writing Workshop was an invaluable opportunity to meet with other junior scholars who are putting together proposals, to learn from senior faculty's experiences and insights about writing grants, and to review successful proposals to understand common structures and themes that have worked,” she said. “In addition, it was extremely valuable to be able to workshop proposal ideas and get concrete feedback from other junior faculty as well as senior faculty. We also learned about the structure of the various parts of the application and key issues to think about for each part of the application.”

Associate Professor of Sociology Margot Jackson also participated in 2017 and found the Workshop to be "a great motivation to move a proposal through the writing process, as well as a useful platform for linking scholars across the career stage and with different levels of NIH grant writing experience," she said. "It was useful to have a centralized venue to gather relevant materials and expertise, and I continue to draw from the resources offered during the workshop."

The 2017 cohort included Owens and Jackson as well as Assistant Professor of Economics and International and Public Affairs Bryce Steinberg. This year’s cohort includes Associate Professor of History Linford Fisher and Assistant Professor of Sociology Emily Rauscher, who are both currently working to prepare grant applications. Read on for descriptions of their projects.

Fisher is leading a major digital project, Database of Indigenous Slavery in the Americas, to enhance scholarly and public understanding of the historic enslavement of 2.5 to 5 million Native Americans between 1492 and 1900.

Jackson is examining the ways in which public spending on and related to children and families affects the class divide in parental investments in children and children’s academic achievement.

Owens is pursuing a study to disentangle objective behaviors from the possibility that the misbehavior of certain students, particularly males of color, is viewed more negatively and/or sanctioned more harshly than identical misbehavior by White students in the classroom.

Rauscher’s research investigates healthcare coverage and its effects on education inequality by race and ethnicity as well as potential changes in the equalizing potential of child health policies that could enhance equality of opportunity.

Steinberg’s project examines pregnancy incidence and prevention among female Zambian university students.