Advice about Preparing a Proposal Here is some advice you didn't ask for and you needn't heed, but may find useful nonetheless. When writing your proposal, please bear in mind the following: 1. The best way to improve the quality of writing is by rewriting and rewriting and rewriting. Every good writer knows this. Allow time for your drafts to be reviewed by colleagues and then revised. Rushing to submit at the target date usually rarely improves a proposal's quality. 2. Seek clarity of thought and expression! Reviewer who do not understand your ideas or writing will have problems. When reviewers become confused by a proposal, they conclude that the proposal is confusing. (Seldom do they conclude that they are not smart enough to understand the brilliant ideas before them.) Extensive use of unexplained technical jargon or specialized terminology currently fashionable in your field can make it especially difficult for any reviewer to grasp your meaning and purpose. It is your responsibility to bring your readers along with you. 3. The one-page Project Summary may be the single most important page of the proposal. The challenge: demonstrate for reviewers that your project is compelling. A poorly prepared summary can lose your reviewer right from the beginning. 4. In the Project Description, get to the point early and stick to it. If a reader doesn't know what YOUR proposal is about by the end of page one, you may have already lost that reviewer. Better still, explain the main purposes of your project in the first paragraph. 5. Consistency may be a hobgoblin in some contexts, but it is essential in a research proposal. Once you've laid out your main ideas and objectives, stick to them. A fifteen-page proposal is no place for your ideas to develop discursively. They should be articulated concisely and fully mature at the outset. A trick for accomplishing this is to try moving the final paragraph of an early draft to the first paragraph of a subsequent draft. 6. Work first and hardest on your conceptual framework, research questions, and work plan. The real heart of a good proposal is: a) a strong statement about the intellectual tradition and approach from which your work grows; b) a solid description of your research questions and why they are important; and c) a clear description of how you intend to accomplish this project - including how and where you will gather the information and data to make your case. Strive for the best possible fit among your intellectual objectives and the means proposed for achieving them. A literature review is important for indicating what is known about the problem you've framed and its place in the field. It certainly helps you show why your project matters. In the final draft of the proposal, the literature review may come before the conceptualization, research questions, and work plan, but in your thinking give priority to the gist of your proposal, as opposed to the relevant work of others. A final word of advice: Don't give short shrift to the work plan. 7. Resist the urge to overstate your case and overpromise about the work you can accomplish. Most reviewers are experienced researchers and will make sensible assessments of both, so they will feel reassured to learn that you've also made sensible judgments on these matters. 8. The budget should be realistic, and the accompanying justification should explain items that look - or are -- out of the ordinary. The budget guidelines in the Program Announcement are that - guidelines -and larger amounts can be justified. Know, too, that most budgets are negotiated if the Program determines that the proposal should be supported. 9. NSF has established only two criteria for reviewers to consider in evaluating your proposal. First, they must consider how your work will advance our understanding of science or technology and how the work plan will contribute to your research objectives. They are asked to comment on your qualifications for carrying out this project, and on results from previous NSF support. In sum, they are asked to evaluate the proposal's scientific merit. Second, reviewers are asked to evaluate the broader impacts of your work for society more generally. These can include enhancing teaching or other educational objectives, broadening the participation of underrepresented groups in the field, or expanding the infrastructural base of your scholarly community. You should address these considerations in the proposal. 10. STS proposals are evaluated by two different kinds of reviewers. Several will be specialists in the area(s) of research covered by the proposal. Others will be members of the STS Advisory Panel and may approach your domain within STS as a generalist. Panelists review the project's merits and how it stacks up in comparison with all the others. Often this means comparing very different sorts of STS scholarship. Do not automatically assume that reviewers have familiarity with the arcane concerns of your specialty. Explain how your work will contribute to the field of Science and Technology Studies. 11. Read the STS Program Announcement 01-159 and the NSF's Grant Proposal Guide (GPG) and follow their guidelines. Page lengths and format specifications for proposals are taken very seriously, and proposals that deviate significantly from these guidelines may be returned without consideration. Similarly, the proposal topic and the type and amount of support requested should fit within the program guidelines. 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