SOM Faculty Development Grant for Educational Scholarship
The VCU School of Medicine promotes excellence in teaching and mentoring by developing, supporting, and recognizing dedicated educators who strive to ensure excellent training for the next generation of physicians. To gain national prominence, we need to publish our strong educational work.
The Office of Assessment, Evaluation and Scholarship and The Office of Faculty Affairs is pleased to announce small pilot grants to fund projects aimed at innovation and improvement in teaching and learning that lead to educational scholarship and publication. Proposals will be reviewed for their significance (rationale and contribution), expertise to carry out the proposed work, innovation, approach (e.g., plan, methods for design, implementation, evaluation), and potential for scholarship (dissemination through publication and further grant funding).
Open the panels below for more information.
We encourage educational innovations that will have a lasting impact on instruction, assessment, and educational research at the School of Medicine. Innovation could be related to—but is not limited to—simulation models, service learning, case-based or team- based learning, novel instructional delivery approaches, and innovative assessment methods. We especially encourage projects that address one of the following four priority areas: 1) Collaboration: interdisciplinary, inter-professional, or partnering w/ community organizations; 2) Rigorous approaches to scholarship or innovation; 3) Impact and sustainability
The goal of education scholarship pilot grants is to study the implementation and/or outcomes of educational innovations and to publish a paper on the findings. Examples might include evaluation of new pedagogical methods or research that investigates known problems in bioscience or medical education with a goal of proposing innovative solutions.
VCU SOM faculty are eligible. Projects collaborating with other VCU schools such as other health professions schools will be accepted as long as the PI is a faculty at the School of Medicine.
Grants will be funded up to $4000. For projects over $4000, additional funding may be requested up to $10,000. Grants may also cover travel to a meeting where the faculty is presenting and has submitted a paper for publication. Projects may also request resources from the Office of Assessment, Evaluation and Scholarship such as qualitative expertise, data entry, transcription, and statistical support. Funds must be spent within 12 months. A 6-month grant report update will be required.
Please submit an email of intent with a brief description of your proposed research to Meagan.Rawls@vcuhealth.org. Please use the subject line "AES Educational Grants" for all emails and inquiries. You do not need to send a full proposal with your email, though you may use the proposal guidelines to understand areas we may address in follow-up communication.
Grant proposals should not exceed three pages, with two pages of narrative and one page for the proposed budget & references. The first two pages of the grant proposal are for the project narrative and should address content categories 1-7 described below. The third page of the grant proposal should present the project budget described in content category 8 below. Any other materials in the appendix will not be forwarded to the review committee.
Content Categories: Applicants must address the following eight areas in their grant proposal. This proposal is not to exceed 3 pages—two pages for the narrative and one page for the budget& references. This proposal is intended to be part of the first draft of the paper that will come from this work.
- Specific educational aims: Describe the goal of the project. How does this project contribute to improving bioscience or medical teaching and mentoring at VCU or beyond? Identify which of the funding priorities (collaboration, diversity and inclusion, rigorous approaches to scholarship or innovation, impact and sustainability) the project seeks to address.
- Project rationale: Discuss the educational impact of the project. What knowledge or quality gap does this project address? What is your hypothesis? Provide a brief overview of the literature explaining how your project will extend the existing research/literature in this area. References should be included in an appendix and will not count toward the proposal page limit. How will the project go beyond what has already been done? If pilot data is available, findings should be described in this section as well.
- Approach:Detail the approach you will use to achieve your educational aims. Clearly outline the steps you have planned to achieve these educational aims.
- Timeline and plan for implementation: Outline the project timeline and plan for implementation. The project timeline should be realistic and fall within the funding period. The plan for implementation must be clear, realistic, and well developed.
- Anticipated work product:Describe what will be created, developed, or enhanced at the end of the grant period through the use of grant funds. How will this product positively address the knowledge or quality gap outlined in the rationale of the proposal (Section II)?
- Evaluation plan: (if appropriate) The evaluation plan should demonstrate how the project will be assessed in order to illustrate whether the project met its goals. How will you know the project was successful? How will you gather data to show you whether the project was successful?
- Dissemination of results: Discuss how you plan to disseminate and publish this work.
- Budget and justification: Please include a simple table documenting each item for which funds are requested and an explanation of why each line item is essential to successful completion of the project. No indirect funding will be included.
Considerations:
- Requests for travel funds are permitted as long a paper for publication will be ready for submission at the time of travel
- Requests for equipment must be rigorously justified
- Requests for gift cards must be rigorously justified and must meet the mandates of VCU procurement. https://procurement.vcu.edu/i-want-to/pay-an-individual/compensate-a-research-participant/
- It is difficult to fund faculty salary; therefore, additional funds may be requested at the end of the project for travel funds.
Please present your budget in a table format (similar to the example below) that includes the following columns:
|
Item |
Justification |
Amount |
|
10 hours of transcription |
We are running focus groups and need help paying for transcription (60$/ hr) |
$ 600 |
|
10 hours of Data entry |
We have surveys on paper that need to be entered (10$/ hr) |
$100 |
|
Qualitative expertise |
We need someone to run focus groups |
$400 |
|
Purchase survey |
We want to use Maslach survey |
$500 |
|
|
Total request: |
|