• Grant Overview
• Email of Intent
• Grant Evaluation Criteria
• Proposal Narrative
• Use of Funds
• Submission Process and Timeline

Grant Overview

Deadline: Rolling Application
Contact: irocket@ucsf.edu

iROCKET BOOST GRANT MATERIALS

Application Guidelines

Boost Grant Application Form

Budget Form

Entire Boost Grant Package: guidelines, application and budget forms

The School of Medicine (SOM) iROCKET Boost Grant Program offers grants of up to $5000 for projects focused on the development of the medical digital curriculum (iROCKET) in the school's Essential and Clinical Core undergraduate areas. Funding is prioritized towards high-impact projects that will strengthen the School of Medicines use of technology and new media in teaching, learning, community-building, and infrastructure improvement within the undergraduate curriculum. In addition to financial support, these grants include development and planning support from the School of Medicines Deans Office and the SOM Educational Technology Coordinator.

Funded projects may begin activities and access funds immediately upon notification. Grant activities may be planned for the current school year, as well as the summer and subsequent school calendar year. An estimate of the projects timeline is required. Projects involving support for longer than 6 months will submit a mid-project progress report.

All awardees are required to submit a final report and are strongly encouraged to submit an abstract on their work for the Academy of Medical Educators Education Day

Questions regarding the Boost Grant can be directed to irocket@ucsf.edu

Email of Intent

In order to anticipate the number and focus of proposals expected during this call, and to allow the Office of Educational Technology to work with proposal authors in refining their ideas and identifying opportunities for productive collaboration, we request an Email of Intent to be sent to irocket@ucsf.edu approximately two weeks before the submission deadline.This 'e-mail of intent' should consist of:

• a short paragraph summarizing the project
  
• the names and/or number of faculty/staff/students involved and
  
• the year or years of the medical school curriculum targeted

Grant Evaluation Criteria

Proposals will be evaluated according the following criteria:

1. Relevance and Significance How relevant to the stated goals of the grant? Does this project address currently unfulfilled needs in the curriculum?
2. Impact How much does the project qualitatively improve upon previous methods or approaches to this problem or issue? How broadly applicable is this project to the curriculum and/or medical student population? Can this project be used to achieve other educational goals of the School of Medicine?
3. Implementation and Feasibility Is the project achievable with the allocated time and requested money? Are the plans appropriate for the projects stated goals?
4. Cost Efficiency Is the project cost-efficient? Does it maximize the utility of currently available UCSF resources as well as grant funds?
5. Sustainability How does the proposal approach and plan for the ownership and sustainability of the project beyond the scope of funded period? Will the project be maintained and developed further, and if so, how?
6. Evaluation How well has the project planned for the evaluation of the projects success? Are the methods appropriate and specific?
7. Proposal Quality How well thought out is the proposal as a whole is it complete, specific, and clear?

Proposal Narrative

1. Overview - Give a brief overview of the project and details of the method of implementation. Please include a brief timeline and describe the proposed period of project activity.
2. Educational Objectives - Describe the educational objectives of the project. If relevant, list up to five learning or goal-oriented objectives.
3. Budget Justification Please clarify the necessity and costs of all items specified on the Budget Sheet. In addition, provide evidence that you investigated other resources that could achieve similar goals as your project (e.g., commercially available CD-ROMS, campus computing facilities such as the Center for Instructional Technology CIT http://cit.ucsf.edu, etc.).
4. Project Evaluation Methods - How will the success of the project be evaluated?
5. Previous relevant UCSF Grants - If the applicant or any participant in the project has previously been involved in a project at UCSF supported by campus, the Regents, or state educational funds, list the details of the previous project, including project title, director's name, year conducted, amount of grant, and grant source (fund name or number).
6. Additional Information (Optional) Provide any relevant information not included above such as relevant experience etc.

Funds may be used to support student stipends, vendor payments, appropriate training, and casual hires. Funds may not be used to support faculty time.

Grant funds may be used to purchase equipment only if such equipment is an integral part of a substantive curricular development effort and not available from other sources. Funding of computer hardware is discouraged. Consideration will be given to whether any equipment requested for purchase could be reasonably accessed from other sources. Applicants pursuing grants are encouraged to contact the CIT Lab at (415) 502-6678 or cit@library.ucsf.edu to investigate the hardware and software resources available there. We recommend the use of CIT hardware and software for project development. You can find a complete list of their services at http://cit.ucsf.edu

Application documents should be completed in the Microsoft Word file format. Application files should be emailed to irocket@ucsf.edu

A completed application consists of:

• Email of intent submitted two weeks prior to submission deadline
• Completed cover sheet
• Proposal narrative
• Completed budget form

Completed Boost Grant applications are accepted on a rolling basis and funding decisions are made quarterly. Applicants may choose to submit their proposals for consideration for the iROCKET Boost Grant, the AME Curricular Innovations Grant and/or the Library Instructional Grant. However, please be aware that the three grants are governed separately and have separate and different submission and proposal requirements.