At the end of 2006, I was invited to submit an application for a start up grant offered by the university that I work for. I did and I was informed that I got it. However, I had to tweak my list of requests because I was not allowed to ask for research assistants. I tweaked the expenditure list and waited. And waited.
After hearing that other applicants had heard from the relevant office, I asked about my grant status. I was told that is was now not approved.
This news did a lot of damage. It flagged my morale and worse, pulled my reputation down. I had negotiated with vendors and lined up collaborators. But I did not have any money to support my efforts.
I pursued the matter as much as I could, but the process was not transparent and the office that dished out the grants did not give me any answers. I was encouraged by two more experienced colleagues to apply for bigger and better grants. I took their advice and started all over again.
At the beginning of May, I received an email telling me that the grant office changed their minds. The grant was mine again. I have the approval letter and am gleefully running through the red tape that administrative machines generate.
What have I learned?
- Keep asking "why?" even if I don't get a straight answer. Sometimes it pays to be a pest.
- Let key people know what I am doing and why those things are important. Make my work valuable and sell it to the right people.
- Make sure that people put their money where their mouth is. I keep being told that I have good ideas and that policymakers will support my efforts. But administrators don't have a clue. Until they approve the grant and I have a hardcopy and grant reference numbers in my hand, there is no deal.
No comments:
Post a Comment