Grant Proposal

Watson & Gandhi Inc. is a company sponsoring and promoting the best research in the field of engineering. They have proudly endorsed chemical engineering research on nanotechnology in cancer studies, go-green initiatives for the Association of Civil Engineers in the town of Mung Bean in the state of Vegetable, and mechanical engineering feats to revolutionize the escalators at CCNY by year 3000.

This year, Watson & Gandhi Inc. is awarding one grant of $100,000 to support engineering research.

Your task is to write a grant proposal (in groups) for what you intend to research in the field of engineering. 

The proposal should include:

  • Title Page
  • Abstract (100-150 words)
  • Table of Contents
  • Literature Review (of 5 scholarly articles) (this explains what prior research has been done on this topic)
  • Methods (of your own on how you will conduct the research) (200-250 words)
  • Anticipated Results (200-250 words)
  • Broader Impact of your Research (150-200 words)
  • References (in APA format)
  • Appendix (optional)

Please note that this is a group project so you only need to write ONE proposal as a group, not individual proposals. For instance, if there are 5 people in a group, you only need to write and submit ONE proposal not five.


Step 1: Together, as a group, decide on your company name (be creative!). 

Step 2: Decide on a topic that you are actually interested in and want to research in the field of engineering. Perhaps you want to conduct research on Artificial Intelligence and earthquake prediction or the use of nanotechnology in medical transplants or alternative fuel systems and hybrid cars. These are just examples; feel free to come up with your own.

Step 3: Assign roles for each group member on how they will be contributing to the project and plan at least 6 meetings outside of class where you will work on the project. Write and submit a plan explaining how you will go about completing this assignment. The plan should include:

a 50-100-word introduction to your topic;

2) a list of who will be responsible for what and by when;

3) a list of six 1-hour work sessions. Be sure to mention exactly when and where (or how if using online technologies) meetings will take place.

Step 4: Using the CCNY library database, each group member will locate at least 10 peer-reviewed articles on your topic and write an annotated bibliography explaining what the research is about, how the researchers conducted their studies, and what the research makes you think of/any questions you have, and how the article is related to your topic.

Step 5:  Together as a group, decide which 5 articles you want to use and write a literature review explaining how these articles are related to each other (how do they agree, disagree, extend or complicate each other?). This will be your “Literature Review” section. Basically, this explains what prior research has been conducted on this topic. 

Step 6: Create a “Methods” section of how you want to conduct your research. Be sure to include any equations you may want to use. The important part of this is to be creative. Remember, you aren’t actually going to be doing this research but think about how you would approach it if you had to do it in real life. Hint: Think back to the Instruction Set you did. It’s basically the same thing. 

Step 7: Write about what you hope the results will be from your research? This will be the “Anticipated Results” section. Again, be creative. Think about what you hope to achieve by doing this research.

Step 8: Write about how your research is relevant to the field of engineering or the larger world. This is the “Broader Impact of Your Research” section. Be creative. How will this “save the world”? Is your research the key to curing cancer, will this research make robots available to be our servants, will this finally fix the elevators at CCNY and everyone can ride the elevator without it ever breaking. 

Step 9: Include References in APA Format

Step 10: Don’t forget to include a title, abstract, table of contents, and an appendix (if necessary)

Write a memo to me (Professor Gandhi) answering the following questions:

  1. practiced using various library resources, online databases, and the internet to locate sources appropriate to your writing projects
  2. strengthened your source use practices (including evaluating, integrating, quoting, paraphrasing, summarizing, synthesizing, analyzing, and citing sources
  3. how you enhanced strategies for reading, drafting, revising, editing, and self-assessment
  4. negotiated your own writing goals and audience expectations regarding conventions of genre, medium, and rhetorical situation
  5. developed and engaged in the collaborative and social aspects of writing processes (specifically, how did you work collaboratively, what roles did each of you play when working on this project, if you feel the work was divided equally, any conflicts that may have arisen when working together etc).
  6. What you struggled with, if anything, when writing this assignment
  7. What you learned, if anything, when writing this assignmentx

The memo should be no more than 2 pages. This is your chance to tell me what you learned, what your experience was with this assignment, and anything else you want me to know. Furthermore, each person has to write a memo. In other words, you will submit your grant proposal as a group but will write individual memos.

Assignment Goals and Evaluation Criteria
Appeal to an intended audience with the creation of grant proposal:  How effectively does the grant proposal tailor its argument, genre, rhetorical strategies, style, and language to meet the expectations of the intended audience?
Analyze rhetorical strategies in your own texts. How effective is the analysis of the rhetorical text that you created? How effectively is that analysis supported with explanation tying back to rhetorical terms and the rhetorical situation (i.e., information about the author, text, context/exigence, purpose, and audience)?
Is the grant proposal grammatically and stylistically correct and professional?
Source Use. How effectively are ideas and sources delivered and developed in the essay? How specific and appropriate are the examples and passages used? How effectively and accurately does the essay introduce and summarize the rhetorical situations and main ideas from each source used? How effectively are more specific ideas/passages paraphrased?
3. Stance. How relevant, explicit, specific, qualified, and complicated are the claims throughout the essay? How effective is the relationship between stance and evidence? Are the claims made supported sufficiently by the evidence? That is, are appropriate/relevant ideas pulled out from the source use to establish the writer’s thesis/stance?
4. Signposting. How effectively are readers “guided” throughout the essay so that ideas, sources, and different claims are clearly attributed and distinguished from one another? Are the perspectives and relationship across texts named explicitly? That is, are ideas from across texts shown as supporting, extending, complicating, and/or challenging one another?
5. Revision, Editing, and Formatting. Does the essay show evidence of thoughtful revision and editing? Has the essay been effectively formatted, including the title, in-text citations, and Works Cited page?
6. General Requirements. Were all general requirements for length, source use, and due date met?