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FUN Newsletter
FUN with Grant Wri ng:
A Semester-Long Organismal Neurobiology Project
Robin E. Wright, Ph.D — Wes ield State University
In Spring 2014, I taught an upper-level neuroscience course tled “Organismal Neurobiology” at Wes ield
State University. The first half of the course focused on human neuroanatomy, while the second half covered animal
models of neurological disease. During this class, the students were required to write a grant in the form of a Na onal
Ins tute of Health Ruth L. Kirschstein Na onal Research Service Award (NRSA), a common grant for both graduate students and post-doctoral scholars. This semester-long project was a great learning experience for the students, and I
wanted to share it with the FUN community.
The Assignment
This mul faceted project gave students the opportunity to research a topic, conduct hands-on research in the laboratory, and write a grant proposal describing follow-up studies. As a result of this assignment, students were able to design, implement, and analyze hands-on research in the laboratory and write a follow-up grant proposal (summa ve
assessment). By construc ng the grant proposal, students were able to demonstrate his/her understanding of the enre research process. Furthermore, the 7-page limit of the grant
required students to prac ce accurate and concise scien fic wri ng.
The wri en por on of the grant comprised 20% of the final course
grade. The rubric summary (elements that contribute to an NRSA) is
described in Table 1. Throughout the semester, students were required to turn in non-graded dra s of each of the components, allowing me to make comments and sugges ons before the students
were graded. If a student failed to turn in a dra , 5 points were
deducted from the final grant grade.
Projects
Students were free to pick any neurobiology topic of interest. Examples included: Alzheimer’s Disease, epilepsy, Parkinson’s Disease, and Au sm. Students then had the choice of collec ng data in 3 different ways: 1) cell culture experiments using neuronal cell lines, 2) gene quan fica on using in situ hybridiza on images from the Allen Brain Atlas
(gene mapping) or, 3) data mining of publicly available microarray data from the Gene Expression Omnibus (Figure 1).
All image analysis of cell culture experiments and gene mapping were completed using freely available NIH ImageJ so ware. Below are examples of each type of project:
Cell Culture: Assessing the effect ́