Rural health is a hot topic right now in the grant world! That’s why I was so excited to talk with leaders from a local health nonprofit serving residents in my rural area. The Health Hut has an intriguing history and a strong mission, and I couldn’t wait to hear more.

Welcome to our conversation.

First of all, can you both introduce yourselves? 

JW: I'm Dr. Jackie White, and I'm the Medical Director here at The Health Hut.

RB: And I'm Rebecca Byrd, the Dietitian and Assistant Grant Writer.

Then to set context, can you tell me about The Health Hut and where you're located?

JW: The Health Hut is a free clinic for people in Lincoln Parish, Louisiana. It is mainly funded by the Lincoln Health Foundation and started in 2012 to fill the gap for people who did not have insurance and did not have anywhere to go. I came here in 2015; and in 2017, we went from seeing just uninsured patients to people who did have Medicaid. Back in 2017, we didn't have enough Medicaid providers in our parish, so our Board let us take Medicaid patients, just so those people would have a provider. About 70% of our patients right now are uninsured, and anywhere from 25-35% are on Medicaid.

We try to follow a health needs assessment that the Foundation does every couple years. We used to see only adults because that was the need. Recently pediatrics has become a need; so two or three years ago, our Board allowed us to start seeing kids because there were more and more uninsured children.

Finally, we do primary care. We try to encourage our patients to call and make an appointment; but we do have walk-ins and try to fit them in too. Our patient schedules can be undetermined, or they work hourly and don't want to miss their jobs.

Why do you do what you do, personally and/or as an organization?

RB: I started working at the Health Hut almost 7 years ago, and I never thought I would do counseling as a job. It never appealed to me before, but I really like the monthly interaction that I get just because it's a free clinic. Patients can come as often as they want; they don't have to pay for it. And so a lot of them come pretty regularly - monthly, every two months, every three months. I really just enjoy getting to know the person - why they're doing what they're doing, why they're struggling, and how we can help fix the struggle. A lot of times people just need somebody to give them some ideas, and so I enjoy that. I really enjoy the relationship side of it.

JW: I love my job because we're helping a population that has nowhere else to go. And we're able to really take care of them as a whole patient. We do primary care, so there are some things we're not able to answer for them, but I think it's serving a huge benefit. I saw it from the outside when I worked at the ER. These patients had nowhere to go; they'd go get one ER visit, and then they're never able to financially come out.

And you know what? It's funny to me, because we're able to tell patients what they need to hear, rather than worrying about if they come back or not. We can do what's best for them and not necessarily what they want. That's a hard thing to do in primary care. 

I think everybody that works here enjoys it. There are other options out there if it's not your thing. We all have gifts that we love to do. We have a lot of students come through here - people working on their Master’s or projects. And that's what we tell them. If this is not your passion or love, we'll help you find it somewhere else. At least it shows you what's out there. And when you have a patient or you have a friend or family member, you know where to send them.

I love that background. Ok, so now switching to grants. What role do grants play in your organization?

RB: Well the Foundation pays for things like staffing and office supplies, all the day-to-day running. We use grants typically 100% to benefit the patient. Occasionally, we've bought, medical equipment, but a lot of the grants that we've gotten have been to buy food and some of the healthier items to pass out as samples, to just show our patients some options. We have also used grants to try out something new. Like we need another translator part-time, but the money's not budgeted for this year. Can we get a grant to pay for it?

JW: Right, our first grant for additional staff was for a translator. We now have three full-time translators, and we're about to look for another one at least part-time. We have two providers a day, so between those and our counselor and our dietitian, our translators are busy. And now we even put a translator at the front desk because patients are calling to schedule, and we need someone to help us with the phone calls. Last year, annually, our patients were 45% Hispanic; this past quarter, it was 49%. And Spanish is the primary language for over 95% of those patients. So our ability to serve them has really grown.

Another example is Rebecca was actually started with a grant for a dietitian because we had so many diabetic patients and people that had hypertension, overweight, and just needed a little extra time with someone. So, through a grant from Living Well, we got a dietitian. That grant was for a year. It was so amazing, and our patients benefited so much that our Board allowed us to hire Rebecca on. And then we expanded her time through a grant. Then after that grant was done, the Board told us we could hire her; so she's now two and a half days a week. Same thing with counseling - when I came on, we had a counselor. But we've expanded counseling services, too, just to try to help our patients because of the needs.

What does the grant process look like in your organization? What roles do you each play?

JW: When I first came on, I was just the Medical Director, not doing grants. But then we lost our Administrator for a while, so I finished out the grants we had going.

And I need to give kudos to Rebecca. I was doing all the grants here when Rebecca came along. I started asking her, “Hey, will you help me with this? Can you read through that? What do you think of this?” And she's been amazing.

Chelsea, our Administrator, helps too. She does our United Way grant now. And Chelsea does most of our Foundation quarterly report; I'll just add to it. The Foundation loves statistics!

Ok thanks for sharing. Can you give me more examples of grants you’ve received and what they funded?

JW: Yes, we’ve gotten:

• A mental health grant from Louisiana Healthcare Connections (a Medicaid company). It was $25,000, which funded education, office furniture, materials and books to give to patients.

• A $25,000 grant from United Healthcare

• A Susan G Komen Foundation grant with LSU for our mammogram bus

• A $2,500 Wal-Mart grant

• A $5,000 Willis-Knighton grant

• A $10,000 Claiborne Electric grant, which funded our phone system

RB: I’ll add that the grant for the phone system allowed us to put funds in places where we could benefit patients more. So Claiborne Electric wasn't going to give us money to buy food or supplies. But, because we didn't need to use our funding on phones, we were able to do more food and supplies instead.

How do you find grants?

JW: There were a bunch of super easy grants around COVID. Rebecca really did Google grants. Once again, thanks to the Lincoln Health Foundation, we can devote most of our time to clinical care, but we will look for additional grants that may benefit our patients. 

And we are a member of the National Association of Free & Charitable Clinics (NAFC). That is where 90% of our other grants have come from. Being a member has already vetted us so that most of our bigger grants, and a lot of those COVID grants, were communicated to us through NAFC.

Through COVID, there were tons of grants. Now grants are more selective. And I think because most of our money comes from the Foundation, and we're not totally dependent on a grant for our employees, we don't get a lot of them. But I can easily filter through the grants, and they're easy to apply for and do.

How do you choose whether to pursue a grant or not? Is there a minimum dollar amount that’s not worth pursuing?

JW: We do them for $500!

RB: Yeah. Anything we can get.

JW: Here's the thing, we can always put funding into our little food pantry. We do gift cards; it’s super nice to have $25 gift cards. Whether it's for food, gas, or medicine, our patients can go to Walgreens or Walmart with these gift cards. So yeah, nothing's too small for us.

To be honest, Alicia, the first thing I look at in a grant is the application. If it's more than a couple pages, or even 5 or 10, it may not be worth the time. There was even one we did once, and I'd rather give the money than have to do a grant with that agency again. You know what I'm saying? Maybe it's because we don't have anybody to write them other than us. 

RB: Yes, everybody's getting paid for our time. We have to look at the time invested, and how much time it’s going to take to fill out an application.

JW: We also look at the reporting required if we are awarded the grant. We get accountability, so we love that the Foundation wants a quarterly report because we can utilize that usually in a lot of our grants.

We had one grant before COVID for a free in-house lab. It was great, but we had to keep up with the results of every test we did. It was huge and laborious. We just didn't have the staff, and it was very labor-intensive to track detailed results given. So that's a big thing we look at.

All right, I want to talk more about how you successfully worked with a ULM Master’s student in Public Administration who was taking a grant writing course. That is a model that I really like and have seen work for different people, and I want to keep sharing it. 

JW: Yeah, that was a big one. 

RB: We both met with him. The grant required two companies that would supply what we needed. And then, if we chose the more expensive one, we had to give reasons about why we did that. So the student did a lot of homework and found out all kinds of stuff. I know nothing about a phone system! I was like, this is great, because it would have taken me forever to talk to all these people and find out all this information. And then after he finished the application, we had to tweak it because the phone system changed a little bit. But I was able to call his contacts and get more information and a different quote. That would have taken me forever, had I started from scratch. Without him, we wouldn't have done the grant.

Awesome. Anything else you would share as we close?

RB: We probably look at grants differently because we aren't supporting the office with grants. We’re looking for the most efficient way to get the most money to provide what our patients need. Intangible items, typically. 

JW: We’re really fortunate that we're not having to constantly worry from year to year. Is this position going to be here or not? We really have a good cushion to fall back on with the Health Foundation. We're very fortunate. 

RB: It's been great, because most of our patients are food insecure, so we partner with the food bank. And we're not as limited to their normal parameters because we are a medical clinic. We can give out food boxes. And we've had a lot of monetary donations here lately, so we can buy things that supplement that box or make another box with healthier items. And sometimes I buy things that I know people wouldn't buy, things more expensive than what they would spend, but it's a treat. And then the gift cards are great for transportation needs, medicine needs. And so almost everything we buy with grants we're giving away to the patient. We're probably not normal in that respect. Different than other nonprofits.

That's neat, and it allows you not to have to stress about the monthly payroll. You get to do more community-impacting, meaningful things with your grants. Love it.

Well thank you for your time today sharing more about The Health Hut!

Photo by Yulia Matvienko on Unsplash

My 7-year-old has this one friend. Usually they get along great and can spend hours playing together, moving from one activity to the next. Other days they can't settle on which game to play and spend their whole time together arguing about it. They're best friends until they're not.

One day this past summer, frustrated by the bickering, I stepped in.

I recommended a brilliant idea borrowed from the improv comedy world and the Introvert Entrepreneur: the "yes if" game.

Here's how "yes if" works:

• One kid suggests a game to play [like Batman].

• The other must reply with "yes if..." [Batman has a family of kittens]

• Repeat as many times as necessary...

What happened next was magic! The "yes if" game helped the two kids create pretend activities morphed from both of their interests...

Like a game where Batman had a family of kittens. Both kids happy; problem solved.

Why "yes if" in grants?

Because there can be so many dead ends when you're trying to do awesome work. Funding agency priorities keep changing. Your department and organization are faced with challenges. You feel a need to compromise all the time. You can't find any friends to play your game. Or you stay busy playing everyone else's games, and your big idea stays on the back burner.

Here's how you can apply "yes if" in your own work and grants:

• You do basic scientific research; and now there's big, new funding for more applied or translational research. Can you begin a focus that is more applied?? Yes if...

• You do education research; and now there's big, new funding related to workforce development. Can you begin a focus in workforce development?? Yes if...

• You do technology like AI or cybersecurity; and now there's big, new funding for rural healthcare. Can you begin a focus that uses tech to improve healthcare?? Yes if...

• You are a for-profit small business; and qualified applicants for a grant are only nonprofits and universities. Can you partner with one of these organizations?? Yes if...

• You are a new professor, and your Dean did not approve your request for a course release in order to write a grant proposal. Can you take steps toward a grant with your current teaching load?? Yes if...

"Yes if" is NOT compromise!

I'm not saying to compromise your big things or to go against your strategy and strengths. In fact, "yes if" is your path to NOT compromising because YOU get to complete the "yes if" statement with the things most important to you.

You CAN find friends who want to play your game, especially if you dream up a "Batman with kittens" situation that makes everyone happy. Let me know how you're completing your "yes if" and going after new grants!

Have you and your family ever taken a train with Texas State Railroad? We did it a few years ago - highly recommend!

But the whole time we were riding, I couldn't stop thinking about TSR's brilliant strategic thinking.

The railway is set in an old railroad town in rural east Texas (aka the middle of nowhere). This time of year, the train is transformed into the Polar Express, a magical experience drawing multi-generation families from all over the region.

Let's look at some numbers. This Polar Express welcomes over 60,000 guests each holiday season (that's over 3 times the town's population!). People pay between $30-95 depending on age, date, and train car. If we estimate with a price point in the middle, say $60, they're bringing in over $3.5 million every year. That's not even counting the other train events throughout the year.

And remember, this is in rural east Texas. Surrounded by fields, forests, and broken buildings left behind by the glory days.

From a business perspective, I want to shake the hand of whoever did Texas State Railroad's strategic planning.

Because here's what they teach us:

Take what you have, and sell it big.

The railroad industry in rural east Texas had long died... but somebody still had tracks, railcars, and beautiful forests. They took what they had and are selling it big.

In grants, maybe you feel like you can't compete with bigger, better, more experienced organizations. Maybe you don't have the latest and greatest ideas and technologies. Maybe you feel left behind in a dying or changing industry.

But take a moment to consider - what does your organization have? What do YOU have? Sell it big.

I was recently in a proposal kickoff meeting where an experienced leader started the meeting by asking, "What's atypical about what we want to do? What sets us apart compared to all the other applications they'll get?" It was so wise to start with this big picture question. Because while it's important to read a grant solicitation and follow all its rules, anyone can do that.

This leader was starting with the same question Texas State Railroad must have asked - what do we have, and how can we sell it big?

Good luck on any grant proposals you're writing now for the new year. And I hope you have a happy holiday season (check out the Texas State Railroad Polar Express if you're nearby!).

I’ve interviewed grant winners several times for my blog, but I’ve never interviewed a grant funder. That’s why I’m so excited to share this interview with you today. It’s important we get to know the people awarding grant funding!

There was no better place for me to start than with the leaders of the Jonesboro State Bank Pledge 10 program based in Jonesboro, Louisiana. I have used Pledge 10 as an example of a great local funding program in my grant training, and I was eager to learn more about the history of the program and perspectives of its leaders.

Welcome to our conversation.

First of all, can you both introduce yourselves? 

TA: I'm Thurston Allen. I am the President at Jonesboro State Bank, and I have the privilege of working with the most dedicated and amazing bankers in Louisiana. 

MH: I'm Miranda Howard. I'm a Compliance Officer for Jonesboro State Bank. I also have the pleasure of working with some amazing people.

Great! Now to set context, can you tell me about Jonesboro State Bank and your Pledge 10 program? 

TA: Pledge 10 is a program that we started in 2015 to acknowledge that corporate citizens should do the right thing as well as individuals. We understand the importance of giving back, and we wanted to make it foundational to who we were going forward. That's why we donate 10% of our profits back into the community. And since 2015, we've put about $3.9 million back in the community. We've averaged about $350,000 a year. And just in the last five years, the number is $1.8 million. So it's a program that is super impactful to Jackson Parish. We see the impacts all the time through programs or infrastructure. A lot of it benefits our school system here in Jackson Parish. And it's a program that just really is making a difference, and it's a joy to be a part of that.

Can you give me some examples of projects Pledge 10 has funded in the past?

MH: One that we really liked went to our local school, Jonesboro Hodge High School. It was funding for yard maintenance tools. Their agri-science department wanted to start teaching the students basic skills such as lawn mowing, weed eating, changing oil, operating any kind of yard equipment. Hoping that students would learn lessons and maybe even find something they can do as a side job.

TA: Absolutely. You know, I was lucky enough that I didn't really have a choice. My parents just said, “Hey, you're going to have a summer job,” and they brought me down to the bank. I learned a lot in the summers by being down here, being in an office environment. Having a job is important for kids, for sure. It's just part of development.

MH: Another project that was really cool was a mural that Winn Main Street led [see photo below]. They applied for a grant for the mural, and it turned out really great. The artist was fantastic.

TA: I was amazed at how nice this thing turned out. It's incredible.

MH: Another example is 5 Loaves: 2 Fish in Ruston; they're a ministry that moves throughout Lincoln Parish providing nutritious meals to those in need. They typically ask a church, for example, to borrow their reception hall to host meals. I think they do it once a week or once a month. They came to us for a grant for a concession trailer so they wouldn’t have to figure out a place to do this every time. It also will allow them to actually feed more people in more areas, especially those who may not have a way to get very far. So they'll be able to pull this concession trailer and make sure a lot of these people are actually getting meals. 

TA: 5 Loaves: 2 Fish is a really good example of how we've been able to provide seed money to a project that then goes on to do bigger and better things. We didn't fund their initial startup. They had some community support from a couple of churches. But with Pledge 10 funding, they were able to do more and be more visible. And when you are more visible with your ministry, other people want to start backing you up as well. It's just contagious when people are doing the right thing. And so it's really allowed them to help with fundraising, to help with their ministry. It's a great example of leveraging Pledge 10 dollars to do more.

There are also some non-grant related programs that we help support on a recurring basis:

• The Boys and Girls Club. We help fund a satellite branch in Jonesboro that serves about 80 youth per day. It's a great program. It's not associated with our grants, but it is a program that we fund through our other Pledge 10 avenues. 

• The Ruston Community Theatre summer musical. This one’s a lot of fun. It's not a huge commitment, about $10,000, and it’s a program that allows kids to have something to do that's a lot of fun. Whenever we first started that program with RCT, it was 2017 or 2018 with Little Mermaid, a long time ago. They really wanted to elevate the kids’ show and have costumes that were over the top and have more kids involved. You can put a lot of kids on stage as extras if you have enough costumes; it's a way to get more youth involved. But to get more youth involved and have more kids on stage, you need a lot of costumes. And so having a huge cast increases the cost of a production quickly. So the idea was, let's get more kids involved. Let's make RCT more of a community outreach program, and we're going to need funds to do it. So we partnered with them then, and it was a huge success. We loved what they did with the program, so we have funded it every year since, with the exception of a couple in COVID. 

• Infrastructure. There are other big ticket items that will sound boring. We do infrastructure spend, like generators at the schools and infrastructure projects to help with water infrastructure here in town. Those are just necessary items that we can help out with that aren't as flashy but still, nonetheless, they're projects that need to be done.

Awesome. Ok, our next question is why Pledge 10? What is your motivation as a “funding agency” to keep the program going?

TA: Pledge 10 seemed like a natural way to communicate charitable giving in a way that could resonate with the public because of the natural connection to tithing. The idea of doing something for someone and doing it at the level of 10% is something that's easily understood for everyone. And so it made a lot of sense to make it 10%. Also internally, for budgeting purposes, 10% is an easy sell, because in years where you're a little lean, it's not as big of a number. So it's nice for budgeting purposes, and it's also nice because it resonates well and it communicates well. People understand the concept. And I would be lying if I didn't say that it has an obvious Christian connection to the idea of doing what's right. Pledge 10 is a way of communicating our desire to be better people and better Christians in a way that is not over the top.

I always like to tell grant applicants that funders are real people. Can you share any more about that - what do you each personally like about the Pledge 10 program or about your awardees?

MH: I love being a small part of something that is just so big for the community. Just being able to see the big impacts that Pledge 10 has done is amazing. Also, being a parent, both of us work full time. We have kids; we have activities. It's hard to find the time to give back to the community to volunteer. Being here at Jonesboro State Bank, they give us that time to volunteer. Part of the Pledge 10 grant program is once we have so many volunteer hours, we are able to donate to our chosen nonprofit. So we will have a certain amount of money, once we complete our volunteer hours for the year, to donate to anything that we choose.

TA: It's easy for us to get stuck in a rut, both professionally and personally. And just do the same thing over and over again. So one of the best parts about the Pledge 10 grant cycle windows that come up twice a year is that we get a fresh look at a new idea. It's super rewarding to be able to see those new ideas come to life. Whenever a project gets funded, we're able to make an impact in a way that we previously would have never even considered because it was some idea that we didn't come up with. It's nice to see fresh ideas, because too often it's easy just to say, “hey, we're eating rotisserie chicken for dinner, and we're just going to fund this same thing because that's where we gave money to last year.” It's easy to get stuck in those ruts. This allows us the opportunity to do more in exciting ways. And that's a great part about it for me.

I love that about grants! From the applicant’s side, they get to have new ideas and do them, and that's really fulfilling. And it's neat to hear how it’s fulfilling from y'all’s side too.

Next we’ll shift to advice for applicants. What are the big things you want to see communicated in grant applications?

MH: I would say clearly define the community needs. How is this really important for the community? Who is it going to impact? Clearly tell us how this project is important. 

TA: I agree, true community need. We only have so many Pledge 10 funds. When it comes to grant panelists making decisions on those grant applications, panelists do have their own identity because the panel changes every single time. But there are common threads that come through, and one of the common threads from the panelists is a desire to be efficient with the dollars that they are entrusted to distribute. And if your project addresses a community need, it's going to go a long way with the panelists versus something that's just nice to have, if that makes sense.

Another thing that is always reassuring to see come through a grant application is whenever you can read the passion in a project. It's important to put information in an application to justify what you're doing, and that comes with some of the statistics and some of the analysis. But it's also nice to see the passion come through - when someone really believes in an idea, and they believe that they're going to be able to make a difference. You can sense their passion in the way they write. That's something that's always great to see communicated in an application.

Yes, that makes sense. On the other hand, what are the pitfalls you often see in Pledge 10 applications?

MH: A big pitfall is applying for a grant without reviewing our guidelines. So always read the guidelines. Always. Every time. Even if you've received a Pledge 10 grant or applied before, read the guidelines again. Because the guidelines do help communicate how the scoring works. If you read the guidelines, you will have more opportunity to score well with panelists. 

Another pitfall is not having good writing and good presentation in an application. We say it in the guidelines, but watching your spelling and basic writing makes a big difference in your grant application. You want it to be very clear for the panelists, who may not see projects like yours often.

TA: Another challenge we see is whether applicants are communicating deep community needs. With every Pledge 10 application that comes through, we can see the value in the project. Every project application does good and has value. But what we often see is that sometimes that value per dollar is not as efficient as others, or sometimes the value is not addressing as dire a need as what some others are. For example, when we were in COVID and the schools shut down and we had to make decisions on where to distribute Pledge 10 dollars, it was a lot easier to support nonprofits that were going to provide meals to these kids than it was to pay travel expenses for a speaker at a seminar. Both are valuable, but some needs are just more important and more immediate than others.

I don't want people who apply for these grants and don't get funded to think that we don't see the value in their projects because we see value in every project. But what we don't always see is the immediacy with those projects. And, and that I think may cause some to get discouraged, or it may cause some applicants to think that their project is not as valued. And that's not the case. It's just we have a limited number of dollars available, and some projects just serve more immediate needs than others.

Anything else you’d want applicants to know?

MH: I would encourage applicants who were not funded in a given cycle to reapply. We've not seen one reapply yet. Maybe they found the money in other ways; that's very possible. But don't take the denial as, “We didn't like it, and we're not going to approve it.” Ask us for feedback (we’re open to give it!), read our guidelines, look at our model application, and consider applying again.

TA: Another last thing I’d want to share is that Pledge 10 funds don't come from some mysterious box full of money. It is money that is directly invested by Jonesboro State Bank, therefore, by the shareholders of Jonesboro State Bank. And so one thing that our CFO and I do as management every year is we do our best to communicate the value that they, the shareholders, are providing in the community. That was a commitment we made whenever we asked them to authorize the program back in 2015. We told them that we would be accountable to their investment and that we would show them where every dollar went. One way that we do that is we show our shareholders the countless thank you letters, pictures, and newspaper articles showing all the ways that their money is getting spent in the community. It's powerful, and it helps us advocate for the program with shareholders, some of whom don't even live in the state of Louisiana. Because they believe in the project and they see firsthand the thank you letters and all of the support that we get, they continue year after year to invest in this program. And so one thing that I would like to say is that the thank you letters and the support and the recognition that the pledge 10 program gets, it helps us as management communicate the value in the program, which is important. So I would just like to say thank you to everyone who does support the program and share back what it has meant in the community.

I love that! I live here too, nearby in Lincoln Parish. So I see the fruit of these grants, and I have a child who sees the fruit of these grants. It is so meaningful.

Ok my last question. You recently worked with me to revamp some of your Pledge 10 processes. What was it like working with me and my business, FlowStream?

TA: It was fantastic! Right from the start, we could tell you brought real expertise from your past grant experience. You just understood the challenges we were facing. First you helped us reflect on our goals and get crystal clear on what we are trying to accomplish. Then you made sure our scoring criteria aligned with those goals. That might sound basic, but it made such a difference. We were able to remove the confusion and provide transparency to applicants on how grant projects score well.

MH: Yes! Then you completely revamped our grant guide, which has been a game-changer for communicating expectations to applicants. Beyond the strategic work, you helped us streamline how we assemble applications for our grant panelists, which has saved us so much time. The whole process is just clearer now, both for us and for the people applying. 

TA: On top of all of that, you made it all feel easy. If I had to describe the experience, I’d say professional, organized, and low-stress. Even when we were working through complicated stuff, it never felt overwhelming. We’re really grateful for everything you brought to the table.

Well thank you! I loved working with y’all too and am so grateful for you. Thanks again to you and Jonesboro State Bank for what you do to invest in our community!

This blog post is for micropreneurs and other organization leaders. I never thought about this stuff in my younger employee days, when I hadn't been through all the seasons of owning a business. So feel free to skip this one if it's not resonating!

Where I live in Louisiana, USA, leaves start to fall and the air begins to cool at this time of year. We welcome this change after each hot summer.

But in business, I did not always welcome change. My engineering mindset has always wanted to find the perfect business plan and put it on autopilot. Well 11 years in, I don't think it works that way...

Because the world keeps changing. And just like Louisiana has seasons, my business has seasons.

I'm not alone - those of you in the grant world have likely faced change and uncertainty over the last year. Several times my insightful friends (some of you reading now!) have dropped zingers of wisdom that I still think about. At other times I've asked for wisdom directly, somewhat desperate to make sense of what was going on and what I should do.

And now as I sense another change in season, here are 5 wise thoughts that I'll take from the closing season:

1. A big unexpected change means we "absorb, process, grieve, and pivot all at the same time."

Wow, when I heard this from a new friend who had worked for a large Federal contractor, I held onto it. She put into words what I had not. While I love workforce development programs and reskilling initiatives (and have been part of them), there are moments when we have no energy to reskill. I have more understanding now for people in this situation. It's a lot to process, and that takes some time.

2. "It's not personal."

This one came from a real estate agent friend. Real estate had an amazing couple years... then nothing. I asked if the slowness shook her identity (because my slowness was shaking mine!). She said no, because it's not personal. There were big factors outside her control. Nobody wanted to buy a house with high interest rates and high house prices. She had seen the ups and downs before and knew that it wasn't all dependent on her.

3. The economy has seasons that affect our work.

The blog article linked above rocked my world. I'm no economist, but I love a good pattern. When I shared the article with my financial advisor, he encouraged me to yes, "buy a straw hat in winter." Get ready for the spring because it will come again. And if I wasn't prepared, I'd lose some prime growing season. So I tried to do what farmers do during winter - a lot of rest, a little regrouping, and then planting new seeds.

4. "Some businesses did great during COVID."

This one came from an advisor who has been with me since the beginning. She's so wise. The general economy has a cycle, and almost all businesses have cycles... but some businesses have cycles opposite the general economy. Some businesses actually thrive in recession! If you lead an organization, look back and try to understand your cycle over the last 10 years and where you might be today. (I am thinking the larger economy is in fall/winter, and grant people like me are in spring. We'll see.)

5. "Look for funding to be shifted to the states"... and "You have intangible assets that can be built again."

A university leader and friend wisely pointed out that he expected work formerly funded by the Federal government to now be awarded and managed by states. I had been discouraged because I have zero state connections! I had put all my eggs in the (very big) Federal funding basket. But then an economics professor and friend gave me great encouragement - I do have intangible assets that I take with me from season to season!

Maybe you are also in a new season or role. I will pass on the encouragement I received - YOU have the intangible assets of experience, connections, and the ability to build more experience and connections. It might take time (see #1 above), but let's embrace the new season together.

Photo by Susan Jones on Unsplash

Photo by Fotos on Unsplash

This is post 3 of 3 in my summer evaluation series. If you missed the last two, check out:

• A real-life example of evaluation in the Science of Reading project

• Asking questions and getting answers: The power of focus groups

Usually evaluation is about a program, a project, or an organization. Today it's about YOU.

Earlier this summer, I had a chance to present a paper with some really smart friends at the American Society for Engineering Education conference in Montreal, Canada.

Dr. Allie DeLeo-Allen, Dr. Krystal Cruse, Dr. Anne Case Hanks,

Alicia Kiremire. Not pictured: Dr. Katie Evans

Our team studied university faculty's capacity to pursue external funding... and what actually WORKS to grow that capacity.

(Spoiler alert: what works is collaborating with someone who's done it before. We call it collabo-gleaning.)

If you're a university faculty member, please check out our full paper!

Otherwise...

Here's a free self-assessment to evaluate your own grant-writing capacity.

Use this tool, and in five minutes, you'll find out what makes up your current capacity to write grants and what you should do next. The terminology is geared toward university researchers, but feel free to adapt it to your own situation!

And finally, want to implement collabo-gleaning at your university?

Our research group is currently in the process of identifying new partners and expanding our study. If you're interested, please reach out to me.

Thanks for reading, and I hope we have given you some ideas as we all keep learning!

Full paper citation: DeLeo-Allen, A., & Kiremire, A. B., & Evans, K., & Case Hanks, A., & Cruse, K. C. (2025, June), Unveiling the mystery: A capacity development framework for early-career STEM educators pursuing external funding. Paper presented at 2025 ASEE Annual Conference & Exposition , Montreal, Quebec, Canada. https://peer.asee.org/57752

Photo by Redd Francisco on Unsplash

This is post 2 of 3 in my summer evaluation series. If you missed last month, check out a real-life example of evaluation in the Science of Reading project!

This month I'm sharing about my favorite evaluation tool - focus groups.

Ever wish you understood your people better, but you don't know where to start? Focus groups just might be your answer.

What is a focus group?

• A small group conversation with 4-8 participants. It can be held either in person or online and is usually audio-recorded for future analysis.

• Guided by an experienced facilitator (like me!). Ideally the facilitator is someone external to your organization or project. Your leaders are not present so focus group participants are more comfortable answering questions.

• Designed with a small number of open-ended questions. I plan questions in advance with my client according to what they want to understand better (or even what their funding agency wants to know).

Examples from my work

I have used focus groups to help clients explore each of the following:

• Long-term impacts: Talking with a nationwide group of K-12 teachers to understand the long-term impacts of a grant-funded professional development program (I presented with my client about this strategy at the American Evaluation Association conference in 2023)

• External partners: Exploring the experiences of external partners on a large, collaborative grant project funded by a federal or state agency (I have used focus groups to help these clients maintain accountability and improve their large projects along the way)

• Internal staff: Talking with my client's own staff or students to better understand their motivations and capacity building in a workforce development project (I just turned in an evaluation plan that would use this method)

• Strategic planning: Hearing from residents of a rural town as a component of strategic planning for economic development grants (I recently participated in a federal grant proposal where we would use this strategy)

Why focus groups?

• Exploration: If you're doing something new, a survey probably doesn't exist. Focus groups allow you to explore what's happening in your new frontier. Once you learn some themes from focus group participants, you can use those themes to build a survey for the next evaluation round.

• Time and confidentiality: When led by an external expert, focus groups save you time while keeping confidentiality for participants. The focus group facilitator handles all coordination. You receive a streamlined, visual report of results with example quotes.

• Value for money: If you are leading a large grant project, focus groups would cost a small percentage. For example, $15K for a set of focus groups is 1.5% of a $1M project budget. (On the other hand, if you have a small grant project, focus groups would likely not be the most cost effective evaluation tool.)

• Real stories: Compared to simple "agree/disagree" surveys, focus groups allow you to dive deeper and gain more meaningful stories than you could have written into a survey question. These meaningful stories are especially helpful for funders and other stakeholders!

Want to partner with me for focus groups?

I'd love to talk more! Please reach out, and we can check my availability to lead focus groups in the next few months to a year. Looking forward to hearing your ideas!

Happy Summer 2025!

I am happy to introduce my summer blog series on project evaluation - this is post 1 of 3.

Kicking off the series with a real-life example of evaluation, I sat down with two recent clients to discuss their $4 million Science of Reading project at Louisiana Tech University. I had the honor of serving as the external evaluator for this project, which was the largest ever completed by the university’s College of Education and Human Sciences. 

Welcome to our conversation.

Let’s start with a fun question before we dive into details. What are each of you most proud of about the Science of Reading project?

Dr. Cummins: There are a lot of things that I am proud of in relation to this project. One is the fact that we were able to pull so many people together, both internally and externally, to work together as a team. We were also able to forge some needed connections between higher education and the Louisiana State Department of Education, so that we are all working toward the same goal. And I guess in the bigger picture, the thing that I am most proud of is the fact that the project has the potential of huge impact. When we help teachers grow their content knowledge, the ultimate goal is impacting student learning across the state of Louisiana. So that would be my proudest moment, thinking that together with the Department of Education we have the opportunity to make that happen.

Ms. Jordan: I'm most proud of the impact the project has on our state’s young readers now and also for years to come. You know, reading is essential to success in any area. So if we're able to help educators deliver the content that will, in turn, help students with literary knowledge, then we are helping to set all students up for success in whatever field they choose to do. I'm also proud of the engaging format of the modules.

Yes, that is huge. Now, Dr. Cummins, you are the PI of this project. Can you share a little about your background and how you got put on this project, to help set some context?

Dr. Cummins: I've enjoyed 50 years of working in a profession I truly love and have had the opportunity of working in that profession from various positions and roles. I served 15 to 17 years in the classroom. I actually began in high school and then moved my way down working in the elementary grades. I had the privilege of teaching every grade in elementary school, but most of my time was spent with my love absolutely being first grade. Of course back when I first started that was where you really taught children to learn to read; that since moved down into kindergarten. Then I changed roles, serving the district as Title 1 Elementary Curriculum Supervisor and had the privilege of also serving as an elementary principal. Over the past 23 years, I have been in higher education. 

So a lot of different roles and positions have helped me understand education in general. But the best thing has simply been that every single role still involved working with children. Even though the children may have grown as they moved into pre-service, or even in professional development with well seasoned experienced teachers, they all involve being in classrooms and working with children.

I have also been engaged in literacy education on an international level. I was on the Board of Directors for the International Reading Association (now the International Literacy Association) from 2003-2006 and then on the Executive Board from 2009-2012 serving as President in 2011-2012.

And how I got involved in the project - this was one of the few projects that I didn't have to seek myself. It simply started with a phone call from the State Department of Education. They had been awarded this wonderful grant and asked if I was interested in working with them to execute it. So that led to talking to my Dean and making sure that our university wanted to take this on, that we had the facilities and capabilities of doing it. They all agreed, and that's how it started. 

Awesome. Okay, so let's talk about the project itself. What were the main deliverables of the project? 

Dr. Cummins: Our wonderful modules. Twelve very content-rich online modules that would ensure all of the K-3 teachers throughout the state were working with a common base of knowledge. Starting with the old no Child Left Behind as our basis of knowledge, but then fine-tuning that into what we now know from the current research, better known as the Science of Reading. And then we tried to make that content knowledge as interactive and fun and engaging as possible. 

Then fast forward to today. Can you see how many teachers are enrolled? 

Dr. Cummins: Right now we have 1,550 teachers who are at some stage through the process of the modules. At Louisiana Tech University, it is also impacting our pre-service teachers. Our literacy professors have been using a lot of our content and have rearranged their courses to be more current with the content. So it's making an impact with people who will be doing their teaching residencies this coming year. 

Yes, that's awesome. And then considering how many students each educator teaches in their lifetime, that impact is going to just multiply over the years. Wow.

This next question is for both of you. What made the project challenging? 

Ms. Jordan: The most challenging part of this project was keeping up with all of the moving pieces. There were too many moving pieces that we could not even imagine when we sat down to try to map out what all this project would entail. But taking all those moving parts, both anticipated and unanticipated, and organizing them while keeping communication open between the team members was one of the biggest challenges. You didn't want two people working on the same thing, and then you also didn't want something not getting the attention it needed. So just basically keeping the communication open and pulling all of those little pieces together to form the big puzzle. 

Dr. Cummins: For me, the first challenge really began with the uncertainty of what was needed and wanted. The State Department of Education had just received this funding, and the guidelines were not yet developed. Often there is a very specific list of guidelines that you have to follow, but this one was initially wide open. That freedom is a good thing in many ways, but it's also a major challenge when you're not sure that what you're doing and thinking will meet the expectations. This challenge was soon rectified as discussions led to firm expectations which then propelled the project forward.

And then another challenge was finding the right people to write each module. The people who had the content knowledge, but also people that others would recognize as having the content knowledge so that they went into the modules feeling like they were getting the right information. So finding experts who were interested in doing it and also had the time to provide the information was a major challenge. And then just keeping a timeline when you had that many different people with different things going on in their lives and all working on other projects. And then finally putting all the content together and keeping it unique so that every author's voice was heard, but also keeping it uniform in some way so the modules were easy for teachers to navigate.

Yes, that makes sense.

Okay, now I want to turn our conversation to talk about evaluation. Dr. Cummins, at some point during the project, you made a comment that “learning never stops.”

Knowing your extensive background in the education field, that comment was really profound to me. Can you talk more about how evaluation connects to learning? 

Dr. Cummins: You're right. To me, learning never stops. Hopefully, we're all learning something every day, regardless of how old we are.

In teaching, we start our instruction where a child is, and then we move from that point of knowing to the unknown and trying to move them forward so they continue to add to their repertoire of knowledge. So in education, evaluation is the way that we find out where children are to start with, so we then know where to proceed from that point.

And so that same evaluation principle applies to any project you do. You have to determine where you are and where everyone else involved in the project is, and then move forward. 

We used the notion of formative assessment constantly. One in a formal way with you helping us stop and rethink everything. But then even between our internal team meetings and our evaluation meetings, we were constantly saying, “What have we gotten done? What do we need to do? What do we need to go back and redo?” And so we were constantly using that new data, to eventually get us to where we needed to go. That's what made the project successful.

I love that. Now I want to talk about the nitty gritty of project management.

This evaluation was different because we weren't looking yet at impacts on teachers or students. My whole evaluation was on the process of creating the modules.

So Ms. Jordan, as Project Manager, can you describe your role and responsibilities on the Science of Reading project? 

Ms. Jordan: Well, traditionally a project manager's job is to oversee and coordinate all the aspects of the project from beginning to end, making sure you're staying within a budget and that the deliverables are to the standards of the stakeholders within this project. I would say we use the meaning of team to the n-th degree. We all did project management in some sense of the word. So as far as my role, I helped with the budget, making sure that payments were made on time and to the right people for the right amounts, the contracts were done the right way, and getting them through the university’s system. I took on a lot of secretarial roles, which was my former job so it made sense for me to do those things.

And that was no small job - we counted 20 contracts created and over 200 payments processed throughout the whole project!

And yes, y'all were a great team, for sure.

What were the biggest lessons you learned through the project and that you are taking into new projects?

Ms. Jordan: To plan for the worst, but aim for the best. We should all learn from our mistakes; and there are some areas where maybe in the past, I wasn't as vigilant on documenting conversations with external contractors. Whereas now I'm asking, what exactly are they going to be doing? What exactly are the standards they're going to deliver? Let's make sure we're getting all of this in writing ahead of time, that we're all on the same page on what we expect them to do. So I think that probably was the biggest lesson that I've learned. 

Yes, what a good lesson.

Well, the last question is for both of you. What advice would you give to other grant teams about working with an external evaluator? 

Dr. Cummins: That one I could say a lot about. But I guess my biggest thing is to get to know your evaluator early. I enjoyed working with you, Alicia. I will be honest, I have not always felt that way with external evaluators. In other grants that I've worked with, I didn't really know who the person was until the end when all of a sudden they were pulling it all together and sharing the “report.” So it’s important to get to know your evaluator early on. And you made a point of doing that, Alicia.

I’d also say to other grant teams, be honest from the very beginning. Don't try to hide things or provide a right answer. Say “this is what's happening right now…” so you can truly build that rapport that facilitates a natural conversation. Because I think that is what helped you be a part of our team, Alicia, not someone outside and external coming in at the end and telling us what we did well or what we needed to improve on. You did understand the project from early on, and that helped you form your questions from a place of knowing. That made us push a little deeper to get what we needed.

So that’s my advice - know your evaluator, and involve them in the process so that you feel good about your results. Even when the results aren’t good, they are honest and will help you do a better job in the future. 

Yes, I love that. And that’s the kind of client I want too. The kind who wants me involved, to be in formative conversations from the beginning. So thank you for being that!

Teresa, anything to add as advice to other grant teams?

Ms. Jordan: I tend to be more open than some people concerning struggles or obstacles we encounter. I think constructive criticism is very valuable for a team, and you can't get it if you're not being honest. But the person giving the constructive criticism, like Dr. Cummins said, needs to really understand how things work. And so it is important to get someone like you, Alicia, who can get in the middle of everything and understand how the project really works instead of just looking at it from the outside. 

So true. Well, I appreciate y'all so much. Thank you again for your time today.

Dr. Cummins: Thank you, we have enjoyed working with you. 

Want to know what a real evaluation report looks like?

Here’s an example! The Results Summary page of the Science of Reading project’s summative process evaluation report:

I've been a micropreneur for over 10 years. It changed my relationship with work.

And now I see an opportunity for micropreneurship to meet the moment we are in, not only as a nation but also as a global society.

What is micropreneurship?

Micropreneurship is entrepreneurship on an intentionally small level... a microbusiness has fewer than five employees (and may never desire to grow any bigger).

How can micropreneurship meet our moment?

• As a response to AI: Experts like Bill Gates say that within the next 10 years, many human work roles will shift to AI. Does that mean humans won't have to work at all? No - I believe we were created to work, and it's fulfilling to contribute to society. Micropreneurs - especially working together - will have the autonomy, efficiency, resilience, and creativity to innovate and provide new solutions to new problems in a world revolutionized by AI. I love the way the business strategy book Beyond Disruption addresses this point!

• In "life after DEI:" Regardless of your opinion on DEI programs, the shifts in the last few months have been huge for a lot of people. In the end, we all want to thrive and belong, don't we? To tell you the truth, micropreneurship has given me a chance to thrive - dream, try things, make mistakes, and learn - more than I ever did in a larger company. And I'm not alone. Even 12 years ago, a report published by the Association for Enterprise Opportunity (AEO) shared that "microbusinesses create a variety of positive social impacts by providing income, wealth and upward mobility across racial, ethnic, and gender lines." And if we look much further back in U.S. history, entrepreneurship was the path taken by some Black women (both enslaved and free) in order to pursue more agency and autonomy.

• With Gen Z: Gen Z wants to work on their own terms - like choosing meaningful work and flexible schedules. This can be frustrating to employers, especially when Gen Z workers keep leaving jobs or at least disengaging while staying. Employers want more. And Gen Z wants more. They'll contribute more value as micropreneurs, providing more flexibility and more value on both sides of the labor relationship.

• Contributing to national and local economic development: According to the same AEO report linked above, "[d]irect sales and receipts and indirect and induced economic output of microbusinesses combined to result in an almost $5 trillion economic impact [in 2011]. Correspondingly, microbusinesses contributed $135.5 billion in tax and fee revenues to federal, state, and local governments." This is good for communities.

What does it mean for your grant projects?

• If you are a micropreneur: Know that what you're doing is "a thing." You are creating your own job - that means no one else has to. It's not easy, but you are not alone. In your work on grant projects, you are creating value for your clients and for yourself. You are learning, growing, and hopefully thriving. Keep it up, and share what you learn! Because you're also paving the way for others.

• If you're in a big organization (and prefer it that way): That is great! Not everyone wants to be a micropreneur. You might begin to see more opportunities to streamline your organization's core work. You can focus on your core activities and then add flexible capability that you can turn on and off when needed. For instance, instead of staffing up to do everything on a grant project, you could look for a local micropreneur to join you. You'd list this partner on the contractor/consultant line of your grant budget, and when the project is over they would rotate off until the next project that fits.

• If your grant projects are in workforce development or economic development: Take special notice of funding programs supporting entrepreneur training. When you think about the "workforce pipeline," begin to envision how the ultimate end of the pipeline could lead not just to jobs but to businesses. And when you see press articles about a company bringing in "X hundred jobs" to your area, ask those industry partners about outsourcing and entrepreneurship opportunities in addition to jobs.

My closing thoughts

I'm not an expert in any of this - just trying to take in a lot of information and connect the dots. I know micropreneurship is not a "quick and easy" solution to the challenges described above, and there are a lot of logistics to be worked out. (Research topic, anyone?)

In any case, I am really interested to see what happens over the next 5-10 years!

What are your thoughts??

More reading:

• This Association for Enterprise Opportunity (AEO) report from 2013

• This 2024 blog post about how micropreneurship fits in today's society

• The book Company of One - this was the first book that introduced me to the micropreneurship strategy of business

• The book Beyond Disruption - a followup from the authors of Blue Ocean Strategy

Photo by SumUp on Unsplash

In the last year, I’ve had the privilege of working with Dr. Dan McCarthy, Dean of Research and Innovation at Southeastern Louisiana University. From the beginning, I knew Dr. McCarthy was a dreamer AND a doer. I had to know more about his story.

Welcome to our conversation.

Can you give me a brief history of your work, especially related to grant projects?

Sure. I'm a physicist - I studied fusion energy. And so the bulk of my grants were research grants funded for about 10 years from the US Department of Energy. These grants funded my research at Southeastern, but also in collaboration with physicists at MIT, UC San Diego, and UK Atomic Energy Agency as well. 

Awesome. Okay. What do you like about working on grant projects? 

I like getting them funded. It's a lot of work, and there's a degree of randomness. You can have a fantastic proposal - well you think you do - and it doesn't work. And other times it works out well. You are always at the whims of the reviewers, so I like when proposals are successful because it's the same amount of work for successful or unsuccessful. It's always a real thrill to get them awarded. 

So true. Next question, what is the smallest grant that you've been awarded, and can you tell me about it? 

I'd say the smallest might have been the most important. When I was first an Assistant Professor in 1994, the State of Louisiana had known at the time the Louisiana Educational Quality Support Fund, now called the Board of Regents Support Fund. Those grants were for junior faculty just to get started. I was awarded one, and it wasn't much. I mean, I'm not an expensive researcher. I'm a theorist and computational person, so I just needed some summertime and student time and travel. The total cost of the grant was maybe $75,000 for three years. It wasn't much, but it led me to getting funded by DOE for the next 10 years. It was the springboard to long-term funding from the Federal government, which is the entire purpose of those grants. It's meant to make you Federally competitive, and it did. 

That’s so cool - faithful with the little things!

Next, what's the largest grant you've been awarded, and can you tell me about it? 

When I was Dean of Science and Technology, I was very closely involved in a large grant from a private company called Air Products. The project was to do environmental monitoring related to a carbon capture project they're proposing. It was a $10 million grant over three years. So it was a thrill, as you can imagine. 

Very exciting because we have had five investigators on the project. There was a real challenge of bringing them all together and then tying all the separate projects into one coherent product. We've never had anything like that at Southeastern. Again, not your typical Federal award, but one from a private industry and a big dollar amount. So that's what led to me moving into the Dean position - I realized there are more opportunities for grants like that, and I needed a lot more time to work on them.

Wow yes, that’s big. Can you share a little more about the project? What led to it, and what have the outcomes been so far?

Well, we're in the third year. It's ongoing, but the work's been so successful, they're going to ask us to do it for two more years. They didn’t put an RFP out; rather it was more relationship building. We had to convince the company that we were capable of doing the work. They recognized our capacity and asked us to do it.

As far as outcomes, the project involves environmental monitoring of Lake Maurepas. One component is the aquatic environment, both the populations and health of all the fish and the crabs and shrimp, and then also the stresses of the various organisms. It's a very poorly understood lake. We've discovered species in Lake Maurepas we didn't know existed. We found that even though it's labeled as a shrimp sanctuary, in three years we only found eight shrimp. We found Gulf sturgeon there, never seen before in that lake at all. We're finding a lot of interesting things about the various heavy metals in the lake which we did not know before. We're doing both mechanical analysis and also Tisch samples. 

We're also working on the wetlands. We're planting a number of trees and trying to reforest the area. We’re doing experiments as to what's the best environment for the trees to grow. What can we do to get them reforested? Because there used to be a huge cypress forest there, and it was logged. And it's been a real challenge getting things to grow back.

The whole project is a variety of things that are way outside of my field of physics! But it's still been cool to learn about all this stuff. 

Yes, and you talked about your role bringing people together with the right expertise. 

Right, that's the big part. And getting people who normally don't work with each other to work with each other. That's been really beneficial, and we're seeing a lot of synergy. So it's really more of a project management type role.

Another part is relating to the community, getting these data out to the community. A lot of the work will be published in scientific journals, but a huge component of this is making sure the community understands what we're doing. And talking to elected officials; they need to know too because the science in this area is going to have an impact on policy, and elected officials need to be informed about the science.

So it's a very far reaching project with a lot of different stakeholders. As opposed to back in my research days where communicating with stakeholders was going to conferences and publishing papers; it was really other physicists who I'd work with. This is now working with all sorts of different people. 

Yes, I can only imagine!

Next, what has been your favorite grant project and why? 

This is a project we started recently. I worked with a fellow colleague of mine who's also a physicist, and we started a program at Southeastern called STEM Scholars. We received private funding, and we also have NSF funding through the FUEL grant led by LSU and DOE funding through the H2theFuture grant led by the Greater New Orleans Development Foundation.

The STEM Scholars program provides a very intensive year-long research experience for high school students from underserved populations in Louisiana. The students work with our own faculty and with our undergrads on a research project over a year, and it's had a tremendous impact on the students. Many of our populations just don't have access to things like this. So we're really reaching out and showing students that they are able to do this work, they can do it, and they should do it. And it's making them much more interested in going to college and pursuing a degree in an energy-related discipline. It's also been really gratifying to see the program grow. The first year we had 30 students, and now we serve about 150 students.

So that's my favorite project because I really do think it's the most meaningful and is truly changing lives of students and also improving the state. We're accessing a population that had been largely overlooked before; and now they are moving into higher secondary education, post secondary education, and hopefully really good careers in STEM fields. It’s a very exciting program, and we're very proud of it. And it’s going to be ongoing for a while - I think we're going to have another contract signed next week with another company. 

It's so neat and inspiring to me to see your journey from being a growing researcher, then a successful researcher, and now full circle to helping the next generation to do the same. 

Next, how have you changed as a PI? What's the biggest thing you've learned? 

A lot of times, when junior faculty start, they don't really know how to be a PI. I didn't, but I was lucky in that I had worked with really good people when I was at University of Maryland. I had written a lot of papers, which helped with grant proposals because it meant I had some ideas.

Now I’ve moved from doing my own thing to really helping facilitate others and find their talents.  What I'm supposed to be doing as a Dean of Research is not so much advancing my own individual agenda, but advancing the research agenda and priorities of the entire university and identifying the skills in the university and opportunities that we maybe haven't thought about before, such as STEM Scholars and working with companies. 

Okay, that leads right into the next question. What is your advice for up and coming PIs? 

There are three basic elements to writing a grant. First of all, understand what the agency wants to fund. I mean if they want to fund K-12 education, don't write a research grant about neutrinos. It just doesn't make any sense. So understand what they want.

Explain to them why what you're doing is important and relevant. You need to let them know this is an important thing, this is relevant, this is meaningful. So it's really understanding your audience and then letting them know why it's important.

And then, and this is the last part, tell them why you're the person to do it. Show them you can do it and you can do it where you are. So let’s say I’m at Southeastern, and I identified a good problem, but I needed a million dollar piece of equipment in a lab - that would make no sense because then I can't do it here. So you need to make sure that you have the ability to do it, not just within your own talents, but at your institution… which could mean collaborating with another institution. So that was actually what happened with DOE when I was collaborating with others at MIT. They clearly have resources at MIT that we're not going to have in Hammond, Louisiana. 

You have to be honest about your idea and your capabilities. Reviewers will figure out quickly if you aren't telling the full story. Show them you really understand what you're doing, you understand your barriers, and you know what it takes to successfully overcome those barriers. If your problem isn’t that important, try to find another important problem. Or if you need some help, find an institution down the road or another state that can help you out.

That’s great. So in the last year, you worked with me and my colleague, Dr. Allie DeLeo-Allen. Can you share about that experience? 

We have written some proposals which required assessment, a type of assessment which we didn't have the skill set for, and you certainly have that skill set. So that's been really helpful. You've assisted us in identifying some opportunities which I did not know about before, finding a rural workforce development grant. And I think it's going to be really helpful with you guys working with our junior faculty to give them some skills that they're going to need to move forward. Sometimes hearing it from someone external is more powerful than hearing it from someone internally.

Yes, we’re looking forward to that!

All right, anything else you want to share? Questions I haven't asked?

You talked about my different path, and I guess it's like everything you do. Something can have an impact on what you're doing, and it is completely different later on. So the more experiences you accumulate, the more you are able to fit yourself into a place that you never imagined you could before. I never could have done what I'm doing now when I first started as assistant professor. It's a variety of experiences which have allowed that to happen. 

That’s so wise. Well, thank you so much for your time today! I continue to learn from you, and I hope the rest of our community will as well.