Like thousands of other academics who work in elementary, secondary and higher education settings, I have won a few a grants and lost many more. I keep writing proposals, revising the rejections, and resubmitting the applications with the hopes that funders will find my projects beneficial. A couple of my proposals seemed very cool, but don’t they all to the author/investigator?
Shown below are the university approval forms for a couple of major grants that I submitted which unfortunately didn’t make the cut … well, at least not yet that is. Although these particular grants were unfunded, my efforts to collaborate with several local businesses and colleagues further enhanced the important work of University within the community and with the reviewers who evaluated my proposals.
One of my unfunded proposals was titled: Juega Fuerte-Vive Bien which translates from Spanish as Play Hard, Live Well. Approved by the MU administration before submitting, my vision was to create a program to better prepare sport coaches working with youth from the coastal cities of Valparaiso and Vina del Mar located in Chile. Millersville University’s sister school for study abroad students is Pontifica Universidad Catolica de Valparaiso which is located in Valparaiso, Chile. These cities had recently been affected by a mammoth 8.8 magnitude earthquake—one of the largest ever recorded that struck the country in February 2010. The earthquake leveled buildings, knocked out power lines and damaged millions of homes. My proposal was designed to help the children in the area who had affected by the earthquake through specialized training, education and counseling that would be provided by their sport coaches who I envisioned having contact with the children. Organized sport and play provides an important role for healing after experiencing trauma. After such a tragedy, it is important for children to return to some level of stability and consistency, and playing athletic games can help to meet this need.
To provide the coaches with counseling and first aid skills that would last long after the daily headlines of the devastation had passed, I proposed that members from my department would travel to Chile and conduct educational workshops. Later, we would select coaches from Chile who would travel to US for more training and thereby enhance the cultural competency of both the American and Chilean participants as per the goals of the RFP. The funder for this project would be the US State Department through a grant making division called Sports United. The total budget for the program was going to be $111,149.28.
In another unfunded major grant proposal titled: A Surveillance Study of Student Engagement Patterns in Classrooms and Clinical Education Settings Using Cellular Telephones with Wireless Internet Access approved by the MU administration, my colleagues Drs. Miller, Berry and I were invited to submit a full proposal after receiving a favorable pre-evaluation from the National Athletic Trainers’ Association Research and Education Foundation. Our vision was to use technology available at the time to study student learning and engagement patterns and to demonstrate how student-engagement is intertwined with good practice in teaching and learning. There have been several studies designed to measure discreet engagement variables such as the amount of time students spend on task and how quality time on task varies significantly depending on academic major. We believed that using smartphones would provide a level of sophistication to the research methodology, and perhaps show significant differences between learning in the classroom and clinical settings. The total budget for our study was to be $88,117 and included financial support and partnership dollars from Verizon Wireless and Radio Shack to provide students with temporary wireless service and/or cell phones who may have not had service or devices in order to complete the study.
Also shown below are a few documents demonstrating my involvement as a Research Associate on a large scale 1.5 million dollars funded research project at the University of Dayton. Click to open a letter describing additional funded research collaboration investigating entrepreneurship among Certified Athletic Trainers with my colleague Dr. Strough: Grant funded research with Dr. Strough.PDF
