Teaching Philosophy

Teaching Philosophy for Clients from Science-based Academia and Industry

Teaching Philosophy: Clients from Science-based Academia and Industry on Prezi

Grant writing is a challenging and often necessary endeavor in current academic and professional environments. As an instructor in grant writing, I draw upon my past education, work, funding experience, and my continued learning to design and enrich each workshop. I am a classically trained physiologist, with five years of experience in basic research labs. This is where I initially learned the significance and challenges of grant writing. Five additional years focusing on grant writing, mediating collaborations, workshop instruction, and graduate coursework in professional writing broadened my funding expertise and developed a specific workshop style.

Transference and applicability: Grant writing is a time intensive task that is often done in addition to a full work-load. Realizing the time constraints felt by employees, I value effective and efficient transference of knowledge over all else. Therefore, my grant writing workshops focus on transferability of skills by combining a lecture, discussion, and hands-on work using the clients’ own grants. The combination of my expertise, overt instruction, and situated learning promotes effective acquisition and transference of skills by allowing clients to learn within a community of practice (New London Group; Lave and Wenger). The overt instruction covers topics such as locating grant opportunities, common and disciplinary techniques required for writing and development, and technological concerns for successful submission. This knowledge is then immediately put into practice using the client’s own work, allowing employees to actively learn, reinforce knowledge, improve current or future grants, and maximize time-management.

Collaboration: The development of most grants depends on successful collaboration and communication between members. In my experience, communication barriers can be the primary cause for a failed submission. Therefore, I highly value the skills required to effectively collaborate and therefore incorporate them into my workshops. Clients learn and practice problem-solving, different communication, personal and technological strategies to improve their own collaborations through discussion and the hands-on portion of the workshop.

Accessibility: I realize that grant writing is a long process and is learned through the act of doing. The workshop provides a strong foundational knowledge, however additional questions, concerns, or need for input will arise. Therefore, I believe in continued support for as long as necessary. Clients can access my support through email communication, in-house or on-line meetings, or follow-up focused workshops during normal business hours.

Assessment: The grant writing workshop is an evolving entity as it must keep abreast of the constant changes in funding environments, the economy, and academic and industry needs. Therefore, I value assessment as it allows me to continually improve my instructional design. I assess learning by observing the transformation of grant drafts through the writing process, successful submission, and funding rate. I assess efficacy and relevancy through client feedback, acquired by a post-workshop and subsequent post-grant submission questionnaire.

My teaching philosophy is based off multiple values including transferability, collaboration, accessibility, and improvement, all of which are in place to best serve my clients. I am a colleague, not a teacher and it is my goal to share as much of my experience and expertise with the clients as possible. Therefore, I strive to be approachable, informative, and efficient so that my clients can successfully develop, submit, and win grants.


References
Lave, Jean and Etienne Wenger. Situated Learning: Legitimate Peripheral Participation. Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press, 1991. Print.

The New London Group. “A Pedagogy of Multiliteracies: Designing Social Futures.” Multiliteracies: Literacy Learning and the Design of Social Futures. Ed. Bill Cope and Mary Kalantzis. New York: Routledge, 2000. 9-37. Print.