All Your Database Are Belong to Me

We had a very informative class on how to search for and find funding. The final class of the final course of my Preparing Future Faculty career. :)

I decided to take my notes as a blog post instead of in a notebook.

Prospectus?

Consider Timing and Deadlines, just like applying for schools, there are a lot of deadlines so it is best to map them out.

Consider both Public and Private Funding

Review University Proceedures



School Resources

1. Office of Research (lots of good stuff here)
   
2. Office of Sponsored Programs
3. Center for Clinical and Translational Research
4. Corporate and Foundations Relations Office
   

Electronic Search Tools

SPIN (Frowned upon and difficult to find: VCU Mainpage>Research>VCUeRA>VCUeRA portal>SPIN Contact Jessica if it doesn't work)

COS (Used to mean Community of Science, now it's just COS. Bigger than SPIN. VCU Libraries>Database A-Z>C>COS)

Grants.Gov is a monster site that has everything, but it is most useful if you already know what you're looking for and where it is.

Science Grants and Funding

National Institutes of Heath (NIH)

National Science Foundation (NSF)

VCU Sources


Funding Resources

Texas A&M University Graduate Fellowships and Dissertation Grant resources

Duke University Funding Opportunities Database

Michigan State University

Cornell University Fellowship Database


More expensive Database:

Foundation Center Training Courses

It is good at picking up funders that other sources don't find.



When beginning your search

• Research the keywords (keywords can change over time, patterns)
• Think outside the box (e.g. Obesity research using PDAs; couldn't find anything under obesity keyword, but found many opportunities by searching for PDAs)
• Expand your area of study (Look outside of engineering)
• Look at previous research and find how they were funded
• Get HELP! Monroe Park: Ariana Bracalente, 828-1230 (abracalente@vcu.edu)
• MCV Campus Pam Dillon and Jessica Venable (jcvenable@vcu.edu)
  

Most of these options allow you to create alerts and that is what you should do. Link them to a reader or at a minimum get them emailed to you.

New Year, and we're trying to Publish!

Hello Everyone again,

I am in the midst of it here. I've been learning Fortran and writing some code to do Lagrangian Particle tracking. (Just means I am looking at individual particles instead of at all of 'em at the same time).

I am still constructing my experimental setup to validate the numerical analysis with physical deposition results. I am at the stage of getting a reticle (a piece of glass with lines etched on it that allows me to count particles within a grid)

I am also starting to write a paper with Dr. Longest. I am doing a literature review of the Alveolar region. That means... I have a lot to read!

Peace and more as it comes,

Landon

Church Hill tutoring sessions lift up neighborhood | Richmond Times-Dispatch

Many of my friends are involved in this Academy. How encouraging it is to see this from VCU. Thank you Richmond Times Dispatch for writing this story as well!

Church Hill tutoring sessions lift up neighborhood | Richmond Times-Dispatch

Microlectures via Podcasting

The VCU Center for Teaching Excellency recently released their monthly publication for the benefit of future faculty. One of the things I wanted to bring to light, remember and share with others was this background on and applications of Podcasting in teaching.

From that article Dr. Reis from Stanford explains:

Podcasts do not need to contain the full information from a 60-to-90 minute lecture. San Juan College is experimenting with "microlectures," a traditional lecture in which key concepts and themes are condensed down to a one to three minute segment (Shieh, 2009, p. 1). Some faculty find that a three-to-five minute audio clip is an optimum podcast length, similar to the length of a song students listen to on the radio (Walsh, 2004). Because microlectures are limited in the amount of content they can convey, students are required to complete their learning with additional readings and assignments. Pedagogical limitations include situations where a prolonged discussion or explanation is necessary, such as when solving mathematical problems, extending English literature discussions, and explaining complicated processes.

But how intriguing are the possibilities that result from all of the creative uses of podcasting as a learning tool? It reminds me of a section of Grad 602: Teaching and Technology in Higher Education, which focused on learning through generating content. If we can help students to create content, not only will they be learning as they do it, but they will be writing the "textbooks" that the students who follow after them will use. By bringing the textbook authorship back to the people who are learning, you will produce a more relevant and discernible learning aid.

Landon's Lab Lets Loose

So experimental work has been slow moving, but we have fixed our heater problem, found and fixed the AC adapter for our flowmeter, ordered additional rotameters, determined the correct dilution for our aerosol, used a fluorescent microscope to view our geometry and properly cut our tubing to equal lengths for our Lung geometry. Enjoy. Dr. Oldham is coming again tomorrow and I hope to have a filter paper with particles on it to show him! Early day tomorrow!

-Landon

Valedictorian on Education

Swiftkick reposted Erica Goldson's graduation speech as Valedictorian of her high school class.

Her energy is refreshing and she is able to verbalize glaring problems (not new problems) with our system of education.

Here

Progress!

A new post, A new post. Yes, progress to the process. Documented above. I will make some more posts about the work that will happen in the next week:

-Presentation of progress to Dean Jamison on Wednesday

-Generation of the first aerosol, hopefully before then!

More to come!