Effective Strategies for Working with you Sponsor/Mentor
Your fellowship sponsor (your PI) plays an important role in your fellowship application. Beyond supporting you as a scientist, they are responsible for writing key sections of the application to demonstrate their commitment to your training and career development.
Sections of an NRSA application written by the Sponsor:
- Mentoring Approach and Candidate Mentoring Plan
- Prior Commitment to Training and Mentoring
- Commitment to the Candidate’s Research Training Plan
- Research Training Environment
- Candidate’s Potential
How to work effectively with your sponsor:
- Start early. It is not unusual for students or postdocs to start working on their applications ~16 weeks or more before the deadline. Much depends on how well-crystallized your research project is. More advanced graduate students or postdocs may need fewer rounds of discussion with their Sponsor(s) than earlier stage students and postdocs whose projects are still being defined. Regardless, your sponsor(s) will need plenty of time to review and suggest revisions to your research plan and other essays, as well as time to write their own sections. Write and discuss your specific aims with your PI and co-sponsors as soon as you know you plan to apply, and build in time before the deadline to synthesize and revise your application after everything is assembled.
- Be clear about deadlines. Provide your sponsor(s) with internal deadlines from your Grant Manager and discuss your own personal timeline.
- Communicate regularly. Establish a plan to discuss progress and develop a plan for reviewing and implementing feedback. Determining these expectations early on will help both you and your sponsor keep the project on track. Here are some things to consider:
- Should you set up regularly scheduled meetings with your sponsor(s) or just have check-in meetings as needed?
- How much time does your sponsor need to review and provide feedback on your documents? Does your sponsor have upcoming obligations you should plan around (e.g. their own grant deadlines, study section, travel plans)?
- How involved will your sponsor(s) be in brainstorming your specific aims/scientific proposal with you?
- How many drafts do you and your sponsor(s) expect to send back and forth?
- How will you share documents with your sponsor(s) that you need feedback on? Email, Dropbox folder, One Drive, Slack, printed out?
- How involved will your sponsor(s) be in discussing your goals and training related documents with you? Do they want to review every document before you submit them?
- What feedback does your sponsor want from you on the training/mentoring plans that they write for you?
- To whom does your sponsor suggest reaching out for Letters of Support?
- Does your sponsor have any documents that you or they can “recycle” and adapt from grants of their own or previous students (i.e., Equipment and Facilities and Other Resources, Responsible Conduct of Research documents)
- On what timeline can you expect your sponsor(s) to send you their Biosketch(s) and other sponsor-written materials?
- What advice does your sponsor have for you about grant-writing, based on their experience with it?
If you are using the ASPIRE grant writing Trello board to guide your project, consider sharing the Trello board with your sponsor to help keep each other accountable and keep track of progress. They may also appreciate the embedded links to application instructions and formatting guidelines.
Click here to go back to the main Fellowship Project Management blog series.