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Annual Report 24-25

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Grant Writing Academy

ORSP launched the CSUF Grant Writing Academy to strengthen faculty grant-writing skills through structured training and targeted feedback. The Academy offers three progressive levels—101 (beginning), 201 (intermediate), and 301 (advanced)—designed to support faculty pursuing internal and external funding. Training includes in-person and virtual workshops, plus one-on-one coaching from Academy instructors. Levels 101 and 201 are facilitated by CSUF faculty, and level 301 is facilitated by Hanover Research.

In 2024–2025, the Academy expanded participation across colleges and delivered multiple cohorts of workshops and coaching to support faculty proposal development.

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101: Beginning Grant Writing

The Grant Writing 101 course ran successfully in Fall 2024 and Spring 2025. Throughout each semester, cohorts met three times on Zoom to discuss basic grant writing skills and terminology and met for a final, all-day in-person meeting on campus. Participants practiced what they were learning by creating an eight-page grant proposal template that they can use as the foundation for future grant applications; participants drafted portions of the template throughout the semester, workshopped writing during the final on-campus meeting, and submitted templates for individual feedback from the course facilitator.

Goals for GWA:

• To improve the quality of grant proposals – intramural and extramural.
• To teach basic grant writing skills that are transferable.
• To prompt faculty to write grant proposals; e.g. intramural grants.
• To create a network of grant writing scholars at CSUF.
• To teach a set of workshopping skills that can be used outside Grant Writing Academy 101

Lana Dalley, PhD

Lana Dalley, PhD
GWA 101 Faculty Fellow

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37
total participants

100%
of surveyed faculty were "extremely likely" or "very likely" to submit a grant proposal

100%
of surveyed faculty found the course "extremely helpful" or "very helpful"

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"The guidance we received was clear and descriptive enough to not be intimidating. I learned a lot. The in-person sessions were great and so was the feedback.”

- GWA 101 Participant

GWA 101 Participants

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GWA 101: Faculty Participants by Rank

donut graph of participants in 101

2024-2025 Faculty Participants by Rank

Assistant Professors - 25

Associate Professors - 9

Professors - 2

Lecturers - 1

Staff Members - 3

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Joe Carlin, PhD
GWA 201 Faculty Fellow

201: Intermediate Grant Writing

The Grant Writing 201 course ran successfully in FY 2024–2025 as an intermediate, proposal-development experience for faculty who were ready to move beyond grant writing fundamentals and focus on advancing a specific extramural proposal. Across the term, participants met for a series of structured sessions that guided them through core components of a competitive application—refining the project concept and plan, articulating need and significance, defining success and evaluation, and strengthening broader impacts and contingency planning. Participants applied each session’s content directly to their own projects through iterative drafting, peer discussion, and targeted feedback, leaving the course with a clearer proposal narrative, a more cohesive submission strategy, and increased confidence communicating their ideas to external funders.

Goals for 201 :

Help faculty prepare an extramural grant proposal.
Apply basic grant writing skills towards a specific proposal.
Practice incorporating existing data/preliminary results from previous funded or unfunded work to develop a proof-of-concept.
Develop a compelling proposal narrative for a broad and discipline-specific audience.
Discuss tips for communicating ideas with external funding agencies.
Foster and support the network of grant writing scholars at CSUF.

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13
faculty participants for inagural cohort in Spring 2025

100%
of faculty surveyed agreed that the course improved their proposal idea

83%
of faculty surveyed were "extremely likely" to submit a proposal within the next 12 months.

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"The time to write really helped. The information provided by Joe and Natalie was exceptionally helpful. Actually [the entire Research Development team] were so helpful for me."

-Faculty Participant

GWA 201 Participants

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301: Advanced Grant Writing

Grant Writing 301 was an intensive program offered to Tenured and Tenure-Track CSUF faculty who had previously participated in the Grant Writing 101 and 201 courses and was designed for mid-career and senior faculty with experience writing and submitting an external grant proposal as Principal Investigator. Participants selected a previously submitted, unfunded proposal to revise and resubmit by the end of the fall 2025 semester. Faculty worked with Office of Research Development (ORD) staff and Hanover Research consultants to develop individualized development plans and received personalized coaching, including one-on-one proposal reviews. The program also included targeted workshops focused on core grantsmanship skills to support participants in strengthening proposal strategy, narrative, and competitiveness for resubmission.

GOALS

Further develop grantsmanship skills through a guided proposal resubmission.
Receive peer feedback and contribute to discussions.
Solicit and provide peer feedback to other participants.
Write iteratively with writing assignments that build on program content.

hanover research

Led by Hanover Research

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6
faculty participants for year-long course

100%
of participants reported confidence in their grant writing abilities, with an average confidence rating of 4.3 out of 5.

83%
of participants reported they were likely to submit an external federal grant proposal within the next 12 months.

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"What I found to be most helpful is having a consultant look over a final draft and provide feedback. After months of writing, it helps to have a second set of eyes reading the draft and catching areas that need clarification or better organization."

- Faculty Participant

GWA 301 Participants

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