Schreyer Institute for Teaching Excellence
External Grant Collaborations
Schreyer Institute consultants can assist faculty members with applications for external grants (NIH, NIMH, NSF, FIPSE, etc.) that have a curricular or pedagogical focus and that inform undergraduate education practices at Penn State. We can provide support to overall project design, but our particular areas of expertise are project assessment and evaluation. The level of support we can give depends on a number of factors, which are outlined below as a general guide. We would be happy to provide an initial consultation to explore opportunities to collaborate, so please do not hesitate to contact us with external grant questions.
Factors we consider when making decisions about collaborating on external grant applications:
- Project relevance to undergraduate education at Penn State and alignment with the Schreyer Institute mission
- Availability of an Institute consultant to contribute to the proposal draft and follow up should the project win support
- Level of support needed, from a simple letter of endorsement to serving as co-PI.
Here are some common examples of Institute consultant collaboration on external grants:- 1. Institute consultant provides a negotiated number of hours as project personnel to advise the evaluation team, which usually includes a qualified graduate student and his/her supervisor. The graduate student, whom we may be able to help identify, applies for IRB approval and collects/stores/summarizes data, which the team analyzes for decision-making and reporting. The consultant is usually paid via a “buy out” from the Institute at an hourly rate based on the particular consultant’s salary. This is the more common model of Institute support for external grants.
- 2. Consultant serves as an external reviewer and co-investigator or co-PI at a cost that is 10% of the total budget of the project (direct costs). Because of limited time consultants have for such work over what is often a multi-year period, this is the less common alternative.
- 3. Consultant helps the PI write a statement into the proposal that indicates the Institute has agreed to provide consultation for the assessment of the project on a limited basis. We can write a letter for the proposal stating that we have agreed to do so.