CIHR-IMHA Intensive Grant Writing Masterclass 2025

Overview

The CIHR-IMHA Intensive Grant Writing Masterclass aims to nurture research leaders by developing grant writing skills, fostering writer identity and strengthening grant applications.

Objectives

The CIHR-IMHA Intensive Grant Writing Masterclass is designed to support post doctoral candidates and early-career researchers with the skills and tools needed to enhance their grant writing skills through a series of four workshops held over the course of Spring 2025.The goal of the masterclass is to provide you with theoretical knowledge and practical experience in grant writing, and to provide individualized written feedback and intensive coaching on your grant draft.

More specifically, the objectives of this award are to:

  • Develop researchers' writing skills through experiential learning and coursework with a focus on rhetoric and grammar.
  • Improve the writer's ability to reflect critically on writing assumptions, style, and identity in order to make a grant application clear and impactful.
  • Enhance the writer's ability to give effective writing feedback when mentoring trainees.
  • Enhance collaborative writing strategies to strengthen the writer's ability to contribute to successful grant writing and ultimately team science and real research impact.
  • Explore effective ways of utilizing AI to strengthen the grant application.

Ten (10) successful applicants shall be given the opportunity to attend the Masterclass. These 10 spots will be funded by CIHR-IMHA.

Important dates

  • Expression of Interest: November 15, 2024
  • Anticipated Notice of Decision: November 28, 2024

Eligibility

Eligibility to Apply

For an application to be eligible:

  1. The Applicant must be:
    1. an independent researcher and be an early career researcher [Note: CIHR defines the early career researcher as a researcher within seven years from the date of their first research-related appointment, minus eligible days in research] or be a post-doctoral researcher
    2. hold their primary academic appointment at a Canadian institution (see Institutional Eligibility Requirements)
  2. The Applicant's work must be relevant to any part of the broad CIHR-IMHA mandate.

Conditions

Interested applicants must adhere to all of the following conditions of attendance to this intensive workshop:

  1. Participation (Zoom) in all four writing workshops is required. Writing workshops will take place on the following dates from noon to 4 pm EST:
    • January 27, 2025
    • February 10, 2025
    • March 3, 2025
    • March 17, 2025
  2. Participation in one, 30-minute one-on-one coaching session with the workshop facilitator is required. Also required is submission of a draft for written feedback in the later weeks of the course, followed by an individual coaching session to discuss the feedback. Coaching sessions will be organized post-funding by the workshop facilitator together with the awardee. These coaching sessions will take place between January and March 2025, scheduled to accommodate both facilitator and awardee availability.
  3. Recipients must have a draft grant proposal relevant to the IMHA mandate to work on during the program. Awardees should submit a draft summary page of a grant to the course leader (Dr. Lingard) by January 20th, 2025.
  4. Recipients must be proficient in English.
  5. All participants will be required to complete a short evaluation following the workshop.
  6. The Applicant has not been a Nominated Principal Investigator on a CIHR Project Grant as of November 15, 2024.

Review Process

CIHR IMHA will conduct an initial review of applications to determine alignment with the objectives and eligibility of this workshop. Applications that are not deemed to be relevant will be withdrawn.

Following this review, CIHR-IMHA will establish a selection committee that includes leaders of this workshop to evaluate the full applications and select the final attendees (see Decision, below). The selection process will be aimed at equitable access for researchers from various geographies, genders, and methodological backgrounds, and the ability to enhance grant writing among those who identify as belonging to equity-deserving groups.

Selection Criteria

The following criteria will be used to select attendees to the workshop:

  1. Proficiency in academic writing as determined by a writing sample; and,
  2. Potential to share lessons learned from this writing course.

See the "How to Apply" section for details on submission requirements for each of these criteria.

Decision

All applications that meet the expectations set out in this workshop for all selection criteria will be considered for this workshop. Two of the 10 places will be assigned preferentially to francophone applicants who write grants and/or publish at least in part in English. Two places will be assigned preferentially to applicants who self-identify as Indigenous. Note that if more than one applicant is ranked at the same level around the cut-off score, CIHR-IMHA will use a partial lottery among those applicants to break the tie.

How to Apply

The application package must include the following:

  1. Please submit your published paper in PDF format. Many applicants might have multiple published papers to choose from; please select one that best reflects your writing. If it was written collaboratively with other researchers, then please indicate which parts of the published paper best reflect your contributions and include a reference to the citation.
  2. Please explain your potential to share the lessons from this writing masterclass (maximum 1000 characters). The evaluation aims to reward creativity and evaluators will rate your answers to the following questions:
    • Who do you mentor personally? Will you be able to amplify the lessons from this masterclass to faculty, departmental or lab writing groups (i.e., reach beyond your own students)?
    • Will you have access to other innovative ways to mentor writing (webinars, podcasts etc.)?

If you have specific accessibility needs that may affect your participation/access to the program, please reach out to the email below and so that appropriate accommodation can be made.

Apply here by 11:59 PM, Eastern Time November 15, 2024.

Contact information

For all inquiries please contact the IMHA Mailbox at: imha-iala@cihr-irsc.gc.ca

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