Re: Grant funding

[tarversj@winthrop.edu (JO KOSTER TARVERS)]

WINTHROP UNIVERSITY                               Electronic Mail Message
                                        Date:     26-May-1997 09:18am EST 
                                        From:     Josephine K. Tarvers
                                                  TARVERSJ
                                        Dept:     English
                                        Tel No:   (803) 323-4557

TO:  Remote Addressee                     ( _smtp%"wcenter@ttacs6.ttu.edu" )

Subject: Re: Grant funding

Nancy,

If your school has a grants office, they probably have access to three or four 
huge electronic databases of funding sources. (We're a small school but even we 
have two of them...) If you can contact the people in that office, they can help 
you set up a search for potential sources. But the databases are weird on 
descriptors--"writing" or "writing centers" may not be very productive terms to 
use. I'd recommend going through the ERIC handbook first and getting a list put 
together of all kinds of phrases in ed-speak that describe what your center 
does: student support services, retention, ESL, one-to-one instruction, freshman 
year experience, non-traditional students, guided learning enhancement, etc., as  
well as the obvious ones in composition, WAC, etc. Then you can give the 
computer massagers in your grants offices terms that may provide some better 
"hits" in these databases.You may want to specify "post-secondary" in your 
search if you don't want to get jealous of all the stuff that's available to 
K-12, but not to us.

Failing the availability of these dbs, most research libraries will have large 
published lists of grant sources (about the size of the Manhattan yellow pages, 
though with smaller print). They make interesting summer reading....

And, of course, once you find any promising sources, then you have to write the 
blinkin' grant.....but in a good cause, this is worthy effort.

Hope these suggestions help!

Jo
-----------------
Jo Koster Tarvers
Department of English and Writing Center
Winthrop University
Rock Hill, SC 29733 USA
(803-323-4557 voice) (803-323-4837 fax)
tarversj@winthrop.edu
"This writing business, pencils and what-not. Overrated if you ask me." --Eeyore