Getting that grant may not be as easy as it seems but according to a panel of recipients of external funding, if a professor receives such grants the rewards are endless.

The panel includes: Doug Bower, associate dean of the College of Education and Professional Studies; Scott Meiners, biological sciences professor; Michael Watts, director of Tarble Arts Center; Mona Davenport, director of Minority Affairs and Ping Liu, technology.

The discussion took place yesterday in the Charleston/Mattoon Room in the Martin Luther King Jr. Student Union. The purpose was to help faculty and teachers to learn the techniques to getting a grant.

“It’s the luck of the draw,” Bower said. “It depends on what is hot at the time and your work you put into it.”

The effort that is put into getting a proposal passed is the key to getting the grant.

Calling the agencies that the faculty member is working with many times without being too much of an annoyance, is going to help the faculty member to understand what they are looking for by asking questions and understanding them better.

Knowing how not to direct a question is going to help to make them understand and approve a proposal.

“Online sources and print only tells you so much, you need to find a good direction to go with them and keeping in contact is the best way,” Watts said.

One important question that most of the faculty was concerned about was if denied once for a grant, is the faculty member going to be black-listed?

“You will get really mad but eventually get past it,” Meiners said. “Just throw around the idea a little and figure out how you could have helped them understand you better.”

Understanding the approval process and what exactly is said about certain proposals will help to get grant funding.

To get grants for the Tarble Arts Center, Michael Watts has worked with agencies such as the Illinois Art Council.

After you send in a proposal, you are able to attend the reviews and listen to how you could improve your proposal, he said

“You have to be pretty thick-skinned,” Watts said. “But it is very helpful because you see that they take three minutes to discuss, vote, and then that is it.”

The panelists recommended that faculty members attend a review of a proposal because it may be helpful to get a better understanding of how the agencies want things to be worded or how to get the next proposal approved.

“I have seen proposals that are perfectly fine but if they aren’t, for a lack of a better word, sexy enough and jump off the page, they simply do not care,” Meiners said.

All the panelists agreed that the best way to get a good proposal is to start early. With problems such as computers crashing or new ideas coming to mind, it is easier for a proposal to be started about one to two months in advance to a deadline. Also, make sure that the writing style and the people you are going to work with are all on the same page, they warned.

“Make the proposal as simple as possible, you might sound repetitive but it doesn’t matter because if you lay it out clearly they will understand and approval might be easier,” Meiners said. “Help the reviewers to focus on what you want them to focus on, and make the 10 minutes they spend going over your plan and say it was the coolest thing they have ever seen.”