Pollinating the Petunias: A Career In Science
It started with pollinating the petunias near the front door of my family’s southern California home. There wasn’t much real science education in my elementary school of the late 1960s, but we read a chapter about Gregor Mendel’s experiments in our science textbook that year. Finding inspiration in that fundamental life science research, I had to try it out myself. So I set out to cross-pollinate them. My parents were encouraging, but slightly puzzled. Something must have worked because the petunia color and variegation changed with time. Did I have proper controls, procedures or keep a record? Of course not, I was just a girl child fooling around with the plants in her front yard. But that is how STEM careers begin. Some phenomenon in the natural world inspires a child to wonder and play.
Forty-five years later I am still wondering about science and still playing at it after a fashion.
Academic Grantsmanship: Critical Thinking and Patronage
Academics excel at analyzing the information arising from research in their chosen fields. Therefore, it would seem obvious that critical thinking is part of academic grantsmanship. Analysis is one of the things academics do best. Yet, many academics are blind to existing relationships, knowledge gaps, or wider impacts of their work. They are blind because they focus on the brushstrokes of their art and are unable to see the picture that their brushstrokes form. They are too close to their own work. A good first step on the road to excellent academic grantsmanship is really a giant step backward from the picture an academic researcher is trying to paint. Sometimes, stepping back to view the entire gallery is necessary. It is all about a good critical review that asks:
What is Academic Grantsmanship? A few random thoughts.
Academic grantsmanship seems like a deadly dull topic for these late summer days. The summer is far from over, but it is back to school for many in higher education. It is an ideal time to discuss the meaning and significance of grantsmanship for those preparing for the tenure track, on the tenure track, the tenured, outside the tenure track, and even those moving toward promotion as a new academic year begins.
Grantsmanship matters because it is tied to employment. Both are uneasy partners in higher education, especially for scientists. Grants support both undergraduate and graduate students, postdoctoral researchers, research scientists, technicians, and even non scientific support staff with proper justification. Assistant and associate professors hear the term from colleagues and administrators when applying for tenure or promotion. Grantsmanship mattered before the current budget woes and funding sequester. It matters during these times and it will matter in the future.
What does this term mean to academics?