Effective Strategies for Working with your Sponsor
Your fellowship sponsor (your PI) plays an important role in your fellowship application, especially for fellowship applications to the NIH. 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 NIH 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. 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. Build in extra time before the deadline to synthesize and revise your application after everything is assembled. A good rule of thumb is to write and discuss your specific aims at least 3 months before the NIH deadline and to have significant drafts of the research plan and your essays at least 2 months before the NIH deadline. However, you may need more or less time than this if your project is not well defined, if you are a slow writer, or if you or your sponsor have significant professional or personal obligations before the deadline (e.g., your sponsor is writing a research grant at the same time.)
- Be clear about deadlines. Provide your sponsor(s) with internal deadlines from your Grant Manager and discuss your own personal timeline. Note that your Grant Manager requires your sponsor’s biosketch (and possibly other documents) at the first of the Grant Manager’s internal deadlines.
- 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 will you share documents with your sponsor(s) that you need feedback on? Email, Dropbox folder, One Drive, Slack, printed out?
- How many drafts do you and your sponsor(s) expect to send back and forth?
- How involved will your sponsor(s) be in brainstorming your specific aims/scientific proposal with you?
- 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?
- Confirm that your sponsor(s) has completed Vanderbilt’s required training in Research Security and Responsible Conduct of Research. More information can be found on the VU Office of Research Integrity & Compliance’s website.
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.
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