The following administrative information addresses NSF FastLane requirements, and UM, LSA, and Departmental policies. Please contact your faculty advisor for guidance on proposal content.

IMPORTANT DEADLINE INFORMATION:
For Cultural Anthropology Dissertation Improvement Grants to meet NSF’s August 15th or January 15th deadlines, a hard copy of your proposal must be submitted to the department by the first week of July or December! For proposals without a deadline, please allow a minimum of 10 working days for processing.

For Physical Anthropology dissertation improvement grants, to meet NSF's February 9th and August 16th deadlines, a hard copy of your proposal must be submitted to the department by the second week of January or July, respectively.

Your faculty advisor is the PI on the grant (What's a PI? See common acronyms).

1. Get your FastLane password and make sure your faculty advisor has a current password. The proposal must be initiated using your faculty advisor’s password.

2. Always allow complete SRO (sponsored research office) access so that your proposal can be electronically sent by DRDA to NSF. You can make minor revisions to the project description up until the time that DRDA sends the proposal to NSF.

3. Print out a hard copy of your complete proposal from FastLane and give it to the research administrator in the Department of Anthropology. (For archaeology graduate student proposals, please contact the Museum of Anthropology key administrator for guidance.)

4. Anthropology staff will work with you to complete a PAF, which must accompany the proposal. You will need to get your faculty advisor’s signature and we will get the Chair’s sign-off.

5. We will take your proposal to the LSA Research office for College approval; they will then take your proposal to DRDA for final UM approval. DRDA will launch the proposal to NSF.

6. IMPORTANT! Make sure we know how to reach you throughout the entire process until your proposal has been received by NSF!

IRB approval can be "pending" when you submit your proposal, but must be formally approved before your grant begins.

Make sure you can find your faculty advisor for his/her signature.

Write “Doctoral Dissertation Improvement Grant:” in front of the title.

Include this proposal in “Current and Pending”.

Fill out “Current and Pending” for both you and your faculty advisor.

Broader Impacts Requirement: Proposals must address the broader impact (significance to society at large) of the new knowledge that the research will create.

Give yourself time to make budget corrections – there are always budget corrections!!!

Sample Grant Budgets

Linda Bardeleben – Anthropology Department Manager, bardel@umich.edu, 734-647-4509

Marie McKnight, Museum of Anthropology Administrator (Archaeology subfield), mjmck@umich.edu, 734-764-2151, fax 734-763-7783

Good luck with your proposal!