Download Successfully Funding Communication Research

Journal of Applied Communication Research
Vol. 30, No. 4, November 2002, pp. 350 –357
Building Bridges Across Fields,
Universities, and Countries:
Successfully Funding
Communication Research Through
Interdisciplinary Collaboration
Zena Biocca and Frank Biocca
ABSTRACT Even though there are few directorates explicitly dedicated to communication research at places like the National Science Foundation, there are significant opportunities for funding of interdisciplinary research on “communication problems.” This
article informally shares some principles, rules of thumb, and ideas about funding communication technology research projects, though it applies to other areas as well. The
article draws on the experience of the communication technology research experience at
the international, cross-university, and interdisciplinary network of Media Interface and
Network Design (M.I.N.D.) Labs.
KEY WORDS: Funded research, new media, virtual reality, presence.
Do Funding Agencies Love Communication?
M
any believe that when it comes to funding, communication is a bit of an
ugly duckling. “No one loves us,” communication researchers protest.
Chances are that most of the readers of this article were not lucky enough to
receive systematic training in seeking, writing, and successfully funding their
research as a communication Ph.D. student. There probably were not that many
grants funding large projects in the communication department in which you
were trained. If there was some outside research funding, chances are the funding
was not very large and it probably was not from classic sources such as the
National Science Foundation.
Although there were many exceptions in the health communication and persuasion areas in the past decades, compared to fields such as biological science
Zena Biocca is Grant and Administration Manager at the M.I.N.D. Lab at Michigan State University.
After a 23 year career in healthcare management, over a dozen of those years in distance/virtual
situations, she joined the lab to assist with grant writing, development and administration of the labs.
Frank Biocca (Ph.D., Mass Communication, University of Wisconsin-Madison) is Ameritech Professor
of Telecommunication at Michigan State University, where he directs the Media Interface and
Network Design (M.I.N.D.) Labs. He conducts research on cognition and communication when using
emerging interfaces, mostly in the area of augmented reality and virtual reality.
Copyright 2002, National Communication Association
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and engineering, large government funding (more than $1 million) for communication is relatively new. It is true that sometimes foundations smiled upon
communication projects that promised to seek causes or solutions to social
problems such as violence, drug use, drunk driving, HIV, etc. In this tradition,
communication scholars find themselves welcomed and even pursued by some of
the offices of the National Institutes of Health, such as the National Cancer
Institute and its Health Communication and Informatics Research Branch. The
good news is that today participation in large ambitious projects fueled by large
grants is becoming more common in the field, if not in all sub-areas. Times are
more promising for communication researchers with good ideas.
What follows is based upon our experience in building and funding the multiuniversity, international Media Interface and Network Design (M.I.N.D.) Labs.
(More on what these are below.) What we offer in this article is a lively tour with
some folk wisdom, rules of thumb, principles that have worked for us, warnings
based on errors we have made, and clear opinions.
In the literature on “grant writing” you may come across those selling “a certain
formula.” Most are either charlatans or fools. On the other hand, we believe that
there is a blend of wise practices that a creative and competent scholar can
undertake to increase his or her probabilities for funding. There are also a number
of mechanical and strategic issues in writing grants. Our experiences in writing
grants for the National Science Foundation, the National Institutes of Health, the
European Union, grant foundations, corporations, and university-based funders
suggest that they can vary greatly. But advice on minutiae and mechanics can be
tedious. These nuances may be very different from one funding organization to
another. So we will forgo these here to discuss issues that might apply to funding
regardless of the organization. (Those details are usually available from the
funding sources—pages and pages and pages. . . .)
Searching for the “Communication Directorate”
at the National Science Foundation
Should you wander the information highways of federal agencies, do not look
for neon signs that say: Communication funding at the next exit. For example,
communication is not recognized explicitly as a field within the National Science
Foundation. A problem you say. Yes, to some degree. Rather, the problem is the
reviewers of your grant proposal. They will come from outside the field. So
assumptions may or may not be shared, and you may get a “not one of us” bias.
But, in fact, communication funding is buried all over the National Science
Foundation, National Institutes of Health, Commerce Department, etc. Communication researchers have to carefully search under sub-headings such as NSF’s
Computers, Information Science, and Engineering (a favorite at the M.I.N.D. Labs),
NIH’s cancer communication, or behemoth initiatives with communicationfriendly words in them such as “information” and “interface” in places like NSF’s
Information Technology Research Initiative and Human-Computer Interaction
(under NSF CISE). Communication often finds a home because the research we do
often fits in interdisciplinary projects and tends to cross fields. Let’s turn to the
key term that helps unlock some of the barriers to communication researchers,
“interdisciplinary.”
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Start Your Grant Writing by Buying a Pair of Shoes
The one thing we can clearly link to millions of dollars in successful funding is
walking—mixed in with a little talking, of course. The first thing a communication
scholar should do is walk around campus. Chances are that you will find many
excellent researchers on your campus. When we first arrived at Michigan State
University we had an empty room called a lab, a sense we wanted to do humancomputer interaction research, and a small pot of funds to begin the process of
building a real communication technology lab. We put on our shoes and walked
over to visit psychologists, engineers, education researchers, the medical school,
and even unusual (to us!) disciplines such as anatomy and astrophysics. (Meetings with the latter—yes, astrophysicists, you might be surprised to know—led to
successful funding. What area of communication? Visual communication and
scientific communication funded in the Physics neighborhoods of NSF.) Collaboration with other disciplines is a must for communication scholars. Over 1⁄2 of
the very large grants you receive, may not be headed by you, but, by your
colleague in another department, another college, or another university. Also, the
larger the grant, the more collaboration matters; the less your field matters.
Scholars in any sub-area of communication may have more in common with
colleagues in other fields like engineering, psychology, or English than with the
researchers in their own department. Sound familiar? Communication scholars
swim in an interdisciplinary sea. Being comfortable with interdisciplinary intellectual environments can be an asset. Because of this environment and, we
believe, one of the author’s intellectual foundations in undergrad philosophy, we
realized that it was enjoyable to listen to someone in a completely different field,
listen carefully, and understand how their area related to key communication
research issues.
But do not just look for like-minded scholars. Why? They may not really need
you on a grant. They do what you do. But scholars in allied fields like engineering,
education, medicine, etc. may need the theoretical perspective or methodological
skills that a communication scholar might provide, for example, in persuasion
research, human computer interaction, polling, discourse analysis, etc. To ask you
to join them, these scholars need to know how your research interests can
complement their research efforts and help support a successful grant. Before you
talk, you need to listen very carefully with the communication theory part of your
brain running at full throttle, carefully translating concepts, causal models, and
other assumptions from one theoretical framework to another.
Interdisciplinary proposals that truly cross fields are increasingly required by
funding agencies and increasingly sought in previously insulated fields. Perhaps
we, as communication scholars, just need to learn how our view of communication theory fits into interdisciplinary programs. There are many ways researchers
in other fields can benefit from the input of communication scholars. It seems
many of these researchers often have communication questions, goals, or needs in
their projects. If some of these are related to your interests, then they may drop
you an email and invite you to handle the “communication issue” “humancomputer interaction component,” or “persuasion campaign” in their project. If it
interests you, say yes. If it doesn’t, say no, no matter how much funding is
available. (More on that later.)
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We believe there are communication questions in every other field. Learn to
listen to sounds of communication in the discourse of another field. In the area of
communication technology you have to love interdisciplinary work, use your
training to navigate unfamiliar terrain, and enjoy the creative moments when two
fields give rise to something completely new. We listen for the key terms and their
definitions, the correlational assumptions, the causal statements, and the methodological assumptions. We are always listening for the “communication question” in any discourse, the place where there is common ground.
Let us provide a concrete example. Consider the field of optics and that of
communication. Little common ground there? Superficially optics and communication don’t seem related, but have you ever looked at a TV set, the lens in a
camera, etc. . . . ? A sunny afternoon and two capuccinos on the deck of Beaner’s,
a coffeehouse in East Lansing, with a colleague in optics led us to a patent
application. The patent area was projective augmented reality systems, and a
technique for using optics to facilitate face-to-face communication technology
between two mobile humans. The idea required both fields, as neither one of us
had the other piece of the puzzle, but, over coffee, we discovered the connections.
There are many such connections across fields, ones that truly create wholes that
are more than the sum of the parts. We have found ourselves sharing ideas with
astrophysics and radiology, as well as, with the more predictable areas of cognitive science, education, and computer science. Like good communicators, we
begin by listening.
Build a Place That Welcomes Interdisciplinary
Communication Research
It is good to have a place where connections across fields occur more often. The
first Media Interface and Network Design (M.I.N.D.) Lab was created in 1998 when
Frank Biocca arrived at Michigan State University from the University of North
Carolina at Chapel Hill where the name was conceived. The M.I.N.D. Lab is
focused on the interaction of mind and technology, specifically on how mental
processes are altered, facilitated, or impeded by different forms of communication
technology, the properties of interfaces, for example. We are particularly interested in how minds adapt to communication technologies, and more practically
how communication technologies might be altered to better conform to or leverage psychological processes such as those associated with spatial cognition or
intersensory coordination. We also have explored cases where technologies and
minds do not “fit,” as when distortions in telecommunication channels affect
person perception or when users of virtual reality systems experience simulation
sickness or intersensory conflict.
Soon after the first M.I.N.D. Lab began, a second lab at Ohio State University led
by Prabu David followed. The idea was to create a network of people, each
building on the others’ strengths. All the labs are interested in related aspects of
the interaction of mind and technology, but have different theoretical, methodological, or engineering skills. Telecommunication links allow research to be
distributed across labs doing slightly different things, while remaining coordinated. We added telecommunication to an old idea: the sum can truly be greater
than the parts. Each individual M.I.N.D. Lab gains new capabilities by being part
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of a network of labs working on interdisciplinary and cross-university research
problems.
The M.I.N.D. Lab network has grown explosively in the past year with labs at
the Eindhoven Technical University in the Netherlands, Fernando Pessoa University in Portugal, the Helsinki School of Economics in Finland and the Russian
Academy of Science in Moscow! The three European labs have just received two
grants from the European Commission on the topic of “presence,” a problem that
can only be looked at interdisciplinarily. These labs were added because their
unique research focuses complement and extend research capabilities of the
M.I.N.D. Labs in general. Because not all the labs are in mainstream communication departments and several of the researchers are not in communication, the
network of labs as a whole celebrates the spirit of interdisciplinary research in its
very international, interdisciplinary, and distributed structure. Many of the
M.I.N.D. Labs also sought out other researchers with whom to collaborate on their
own campus, not only in the halls of the communication department.
American and European funders encourage and sometimes require cross campus and multi-disciplinary proposals and often want to see some indication that
the various settings can work together or have a history of doing so. The M.I.N.D.
labs network is already built on the model of interdisciplinary cross-university
research.
Giving Starts at Home: Your University as a Source of Funding
The best place to get seed funding is your university. All campuses have
pockets of explicit and implicit “seed funds.” Typically the amounts can be quite
small, but they allow you to get a key piece of measurement equipment or to fund
a student. The amounts can be amazingly high as well. In its third year, the
M.I.N.D. Lab was able to get a $600,000 grant from our university foundation, the
MSU Foundation. Because this grant has no “overhead” (i.e., the 40%⫹ amount
that universities take “off the top” of most grants) it was the equivalent of a
$1,000,000 grant.
How did we get these funds? It was an open competition. But we assembled a
bold plan to build a large—yes, interdisciplinary—research program in communication technology. Because these university grants are really “grants to get
grants,” we boldly promised that we would return all the funds given to us in the
form of overhead on future grants for our research! A gamble. Yes. But, from the
university’s viewpoint, this is not really a grant. Rather, it is an investment in the
power of your ideas. We were happy to be able to keep our promise to the
university. In the following three years we participated in successful grant proposals that returned the funds, not just the total funding amount, but in total
overhead. We were glad to reward their faith in us and communication technology
research.
Don’t Make Your Grants Too Lean
Writing a grant proposal in the area of new technology is like staring into a
crystal ball. There are many things that you cannot predict. Our experience is that
100% of the time we encounter unexpected costs before the grant is over, a piece
of equipment we did not anticipate, more staff than we expected, etc. There is
nothing worse than trying to accomplish a difficult project with not enough
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money. An under-funded grant can cost money to the lab that is unwise enough
to take on a project that requires more money than they are granted. Taking an
offer of 80% of the money you need is tempting, but not if you have to deliver
100% of the intellectual product.
We never assume that we can perfectly predict the future when we write a grant
proposal. Our experience tells us it is not possible. The more you are doing
something “truly new,” the harder it is to predict. We always make sure that there
is a small percentage of money in the grant for the “unexpected costs.”
Day Trips for Grants: Visiting Washington or Brussels
If you are extraverted, have some really good ideas, and can think on your feet,
you might consider visiting project managers and directorates in Washington or
Brussels. We have done both and learned some things along the way. Most project
directors love to talk to researchers. That’s their job. In our experience, most
genuinely want to help you. They can be amazingly welcoming and generous with
their time.
But be prepared. Each is a serious researcher who has seen a lot of grant
proposals and a lot of ideas. Do not show up with very vague ideas or to ask, “tell
me what will you fund me to do.” A colleague, an assistant professor, showed up
at the National Library of Medicine with some very vague ideas about his research. He suddenly found himself on the defensive as the director and an
associate started tearing into his hastily formed ideas and picking apart his vague
logic. It was not pretty. He was rescued from the fire by a staff member of the
M.I.N.D. Lab who happened to be along. She simply gave examples of concrete
projects and ideas she had heard discussed earlier in another meeting. The
assistant professor was grateful.
So be ready to suggest several good research ideas. If you have only one, you
may find the hour long when the project manager says, “We don’t do that.” Be
prepared to listen to the project director and find some resonance between what
you want to do and what the directorate does. If there is no fit, you didn’t do your
homework, as you shouldn’t be in the room. None of these directorates is a
communication directorate, so the theoretical and methodological discourse may
not always be framed in familiar ways. Learn to speak languages other than
“communication.” You will still be able to “say the same thing” but, an engineer,
psychologist, medical doctor, or anthropologist will understand you.
The Worst Thing That Can Happen: You Get the Grant!
If you are like the authors of this article, you didn’t come to academia to make
money. Rather, you came to enjoy the intellectual freedom it affords. We were
both executives in corporations, one at a new tech firm in Silicon valley, the other
at a national medical firm with over 14,000 employees. We like the idea of getting
up in the morning and deciding: what interesting question do I want to think
about today?
Do not throw away this freedom. You may have heard this already, and it may
be repeated in the articles in this issue: Never get a grant for work you are not sure
you really want to do. You may find yourself doing three to five years of hard labor
in the prison of false dreams. Academia was never a place to make money. Grant
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money brings few resources to you personally. Only get grants for what you want
to do.
It is not, as some people believe, that this mistake occurs because a communication researcher made a “bargain with the devil” to receive funding. While
national agendas can bend funding priorities by throwing funds at national
problems, usually the people working on them are interested in some aspect of
those problems. No one is sitting there asking you to enslave your brain by signing
a parchment in red ink. Usually, the problem of working on the wrong research
happens more subtly.
You may be tempted, by a colleague you really admire and love, to join a
project. At first you may have dangerous thoughts like: “I like this person.” “It
won’t be that much work.” Or “It will fit in with what I do.” These self-deceptions
occurred to Frank on one grant. Truly excellent work was done in that project, but
the topic did not really interest him. He only agreed because he thought two of the
dangerous thoughts: “I really like this person” and “It won’t really be that much
work.” Stop and ask yourself, do I really want to study this topic? Ignore all other
factors: funding amounts, who else is working with you, visibility, etc. If the
answer is no, then step away, even if it is a feast, because the food might be hard
to digest.
“There Is No Money for What I Do”
Some readers will take the warning above as an excuse for not seeking funding.
The dispirited communication researcher may say, “There is no funding for what
I do.” The cynical one may say, “I can only get funding if I sell out.” In most cases,
this is, to say it politely, BS. There is funding for quality work on almost any topic.
BUT it may take imagination. And did I say “quality”? Let me add that quality as
measured “across disciplines” is important.
Consider the dispirited communication researcher. If you listen, you might hear
something like, “I submitted one or two proposals, and they didn’t get funded.”
Humh? One or two? Did we say that 80% of proposals submitted don’t get funded.
You are likely to fail far more frequently than you succeed.
Now consider the cynical argument. Chances are that if you are trying to simply
“chase funding” in areas you know little about, you will never be able to write a
quality proposal because you lack the expertise.
What about “obscure” areas? Can communication philosophy be funded? Let
me provide an example. The M.I.N.D. Lab has different project areas. One of them
is in the area of “presence,” which is most succinctly, if misleadingly, defined as
the sense of “being there” in a mediated environment. The way we treat the topic
at our lab borders on philosophy. Most will say that surely, communication
philosophy is hard to fund. But buried in theory and design projects on new
technology you will find this philosophical topic under study. And, in a stroke of
justice, if a topic is valuable, it may find funding. After years of unfunded study,
the M.I.N.D. Lab found funding under a 20 million Euro initiative on the very
philosophical topic of “presence.” It turns out that interdisciplinary teams of
cognitive scientists, engineers, and yes, communication scholars, are ready to
work together on this “philosophical” topic dealing with a property of consciousness.
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If You Are Funded, Get Additional Funds for Bright Undergraduate
Researchers Who Might Want to Work With You
The M.I.N.D. Lab at Michigan State University has a very active internship
program. All research projects have at least one undergraduate intern. Our forcredit internship program initiates undergraduate students to the world of research. But NSF allows us to reward the best with the opportunity to receive
supplemental support for undergraduate research when a grant is awarded. We
have funded several undergraduate students through this program. Several of our
interns went on to graduate school, graduating with Ph.Ds from Michigan State
University, Stanford, CalTech, and other campuses.
Learning to Love Forms: Preparing Grant Proposals for Different
Agencies, Different Fields, and Even Different Countries
Funding comes from different agencies, and it can come from different countries. As we mentioned above, we have had the agony and the ecstasy of writing
grant proposals for NSF, NIH, the European Union, corporations, and internal
funding sources. Each is different in style, form, and strategy. The process can be
tedious and detailed. As you try to get into the nitty gritty of the grant writing style
for your target agency, you will have to learn to love forms.
A recent set of grant proposals for an agency in Europe led the two of us to
several days of brutal, exhausting, round-the-clock writing as we battled our ideas
against the minefields of what was to us a very different European format.
Take the time to learn grant writing style. NSF and NIH and probably your
campus sponsor grant writing and funding seminars all the time. Ask for copies
of successful grant proposals from successful colleagues. Find out what funding
opportunities your university offers—many faculty members have no idea that
they can get initial or research seed grants from their own campus. Make friends
with the folks who sign off on proposals for your school—they have a wealth of
knowledge and can be critical at deadline time!
Someone on your campus has funding. Contact them and find out how they did
it. Well worth the price of lunch or a couple of cappuccinos!
Conclusion
Well . . . the deadlines are solid, the application requirements tedious and the
percent of proposals that get funded low. But don’t get discouraged. . . . A good
idea expressed clearly in twenty or so pages can convince a group of your
colleagues to award the idea millions of dollars, that can even be $100,000⫹ for
every page of carefully written prose. Amazing, when you think of it! The funds
only go to the person (or the interdisciplinary group) with ideas and the energy to
turn them into solid research. Maybe this person sounds like you?