Kimberly Wiersielis, PhD, Laboratory of Dr. Troy Roepke
I recently had the opportunity to attend the two-day Professional Grant Development Workshop taught by The Grant Training Center offered through Rutgers. The Grant Training Center’s objective is to provide researchers with high-quality tools and methods to find, apply for, win, and manage federal, foundation, and corporate funding. This comprehensive workshop trained attendees on topics covering everything from the diversity of donors and key search engines to converting ideas into fundable projects. Over the course of two days, we learned the overall strategic plan for writing grants, including needs statement, mission, goals, objectives, activities, evaluation, key personnel, and budgets. The most valuable part of this training was the hands-on grant writing exercises where students wrote sections of our grant that were then critically evaluated by both teacher and classmates. After attending this workshop, I feel more confident in my grant writing abilities. I would unquestionably recommend this workshop to novice grant writers wishing to obtain the necessary skills to succeed or experienced grant writers hoping to fine-tune their skill.