Research Grant Proposal

BIOL-419/520 Final Research Project Guidelines

The BIOL-419/520 Final Research Project will be an essay in the form of a Research Grant Proposal. The proposal can be about any topic from any article/presentation this semester other than articles you presented (and other than the sample article), including topics as of yet not discussed. However, the mid-term essay, the review, can serve as parts of your grant proposal, so it behooves you to stick with your review topic. If another topic catches your fancy, I encourage you to go for it, even if it means some extra work.

Preferably, a hard copy should be submitted, but an e-mail of the Grant Proposal to your instructor is allowed. See the syllabus for due dates.

BIOL-419 Proposals will be 7-8 pages, while BIOL-520 Reviews will be 12-14 pages. Grant Proposals will be double-spaced with margins of 1” and 12 font (Times New Roman). A Word file in electronic format is required. Indicate your title of the proposal and name at the top or on a cover sheet (Not part of the page count).

References: You will use a minimum of 25 references. Only 5 references can be a textbook or on-line source, the rest must be other research articles. The references cited page is not included in the page count. Every reference on this list must be cited in the text at least once.

Specific reference guidelines:

In-text citation format: If >2 authors (Author’s last name, et. al., year)

If two authors (Author 1’s last name and author 2’s last name, year)

If only one author (Author’s last name, year)

If not a journal article (First word or two from reference list entry, year)

OR make it easy and number your references on your reference list and use [number]

References on reference list (see Younkin Dissertation for examples):

Hanging indents

Authors in bold

Journal and volume in italics (spell out the journal name)

No DOI or PMID

TYPE these out – DO NOT copy and paste, DO NOT use a citation engine

Purpose: Your job is to write a standard grant proposal using scientific sources for information. Formulate a central hypothesis and design 2-3 experiments to test your hypothesis, while explaining potential problems along the way.

A sample proposal for Undergraduate students (UG, BIOL-419) is provided as a template. A sample proposal for Graduate students (G, BIOL-520) is provided as a template. You will generally follow the given structure. Both templates are provided for your guidance, but follow the appropriate template when writing.

If you have any questions about the content of this project, feel free to discuss with other students, and/or your instructor.