By the time Teri Gulledge and Patience Graybill arrived in 2008, I was ready. I had been applying for research fellowships since my time in graduate school and since starting at SIUE in 2003. But I wanted to turn things up a notch by applying to large-scale humanities programming grants.
In order to go after those grants, I would need someone to guide me through some of the more complex terrains of budget forms. Fortunately for me, the Research and Projects Office in the graduate school at SIUE decided to hire a couple of navigators.
In my pre-Teri/Patience years (2003 - 2007), I applied for 10 fellowships and grants -- a respectable number I thought. However, during the Teri/Patience days (2008 - present), I've applied for 22 grants. That jump was due in large part to the Teri/Patience Effect. Most notably, they removed what, for a literature scholar, could have become barriers (details of fringe benefit percentages, indirect costs, transportation mileage, etc).
There's also the issue of motivation. Teri has a dry erase board on a wall in her office where she writes the names of faculty members, the grants they're applying for, and the deadlines. I don't like the feeling of not having my name on "Teri's deadline board," for it means that I don't have a grant in sight.
What's really significant, though, about having your name on that "deadline board" is that it means you're not the only one thinking about your grant or fellowship application. Once your name appears on that board, then at least two additional people are also thinking about how to raise the chances of your success.
Related:
• Humanities grants and the Graham Effect
• African American Literature @ SIUE
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