The Greenwall Faculty Scholars Program in Bioethics is a career development award to enable junior faculty members to carry out innovative bioethics research. Each year about three Greenwall Faculty Scholars are selected to receive 50 percent salary support for three years to enable them to develop their research program.
The Greenwall Faculty Scholars Program in Bioethics supports research that goes beyond current work in bioethics to help resolve pressing ethical issues in clinical care, biomedical research, and public policy.
Scholars and Alumni/ae attend twice-yearly meetings, where they present their work in progress, receive feedback and mentoring from the Faculty Scholars Program Committee and other Scholars, and have the opportunity to develop collaborations with other researchers. The ongoing involvement of Alumni/ae with the Program provides them ongoing opportunities for professional development and feedback and engages them in mentoring of younger Scholars.
The Greenwall Faculty Scholars Program creates a community that enhances future bioethics research by Scholars and Alumni/ae.
The Faculty Scholars Program Committee provides oversight and direction for the program and is involved not only with selection of the Scholars but with mentoring and faculty development activities.
What does the Faculty Scholars Program Committee look for in letters of intent?
- The proposed project. Does it address an important bioethics issue in an innovative way? Does the application show how the project will make a significant advance beyond what has already been published on the topic? Is the applicant thinking about the conceptual and normative ethical issues regarding the topic in a rigorous and creative way? We commonly receive proposals to carry out an empirical study of a topic that has a bioethics component. The most successful of these proposals have already conducted enough empirical research to allow the applicant to discuss what conceptual or normative bioethics issues they will focus on. Because the Greenwall Faculty Scholar award supports only effort of the Scholar, other support will be needed to collect and analyze new empirical data. Applicants who propose to carry out focus groups and a survey on a topic that intersects with bioethics, without a strong conceptual framework, normative analysis, and plans for mentoring on these research methodologies are unlikely to be successful. Applicants who are extending previous empirical research to a new population or clinical condition are unlikely to be successful unless there is a persuasive demonstration of how their proposed extension is innovative.
- Demonstrated ability to carry out innovative bioethics research. At the full application stage of the selection process, the Faculty Scholars Program Committee carefully reads a peer-reviewed first authored bioethics paper written by the applicant that has been published or is in press. Because this demonstrated publication of bioethics research is given great weight, applicants who have not yet published a strong bioethics article will not be successful. Scholars who have published a book should submit a chapter that best indicates the quality of their thinking in bioethics.
50% salary plus benefits for three years, up to the NIH salary cap, with 10% institutional costs for the salary and benefits. In addition, $5,000 will be provided each year for limited project support and travel (no indirect costs provided for these items).
Eligibility
Applicants are encouraged to consult with their Associate Deans for Research prior to internal submission to assure they meet eligibility criteria and their projects meet stated program objectives.
Applicants must be junior faculty members holding at least a 60% appointment in a tenure series or its equivalent at a university or non-profit research institute that has tax-exempt status in the United States. Priority will be given to applicants who have not yet been considered for tenure, who have not received a comparable career development award, and whose work will have an impact on public policy, biomedical research, or clinical practice.
The Greenwall Foundation particularly welcomes applicants from backgrounds that are under-represented in bioethics and academia.
Faculty Scholars will be selected on the basis of their achievements, the strength of their research project, their commitment to the field of bioethics, and support from their home institution, including after the end of this award. While the amount and quality of an applicant's research in bioethics will count favorably towards his/her application, outstanding candidates with less direct experience in bioethics will also be considered. Within this group, priority will be given to applicants whose research addresses innovative and emerging topics. Lower priority will be given to applicants who are primarily carrying out institutional change, educational reform, or theoretical bioethics research.
Bioethics Activities NOT Funded (Greenwall does not fund a number of bioethics-related activities):
- Greenwall does not fund Scholars to carry out bioethics teaching, institutional change, or quality improvement on bioethical issues. We expect, however, that Greenwall Faculty Scholars, and the students they teach, will do such activities during their careers.
- Greenwall does not fund theoretical ethics research without clear application to pressing, real-world problems in patient care, biomedical research, or public policy.
- Greenwall does not fund survey research or qualitative research that touches on a bioethics issue unless there is a strong a conceptual analysis of the bioethics issue or thoughtful analysis of the bioethics implications of the empirical findings. We are, however, interested in bioethics researchers who want to work on conceptual or normative analysis linked to their empirical findings.
- Greenwall does not fund basic science research that has implications for a bioethics issue.
- Greenwall does not fund bioethics work directed towards predetermined conclusions.
Submission Process
For consideration as a finalist, investigators must submit the following proposal materials as a single PDF email attachment to Stephanie Endy at stephanie.endy@case.edu no later than 5:00pm on August 21, 2018:
- A one-page, 12-point font, one-inch margin cover letter, including PI name, department/division, school/college, project title and brief summary of the project, and
- A federal-grant-style biosketch (typically NIH or NSF).
Final nominees will be notified of their selection by August 31, 2018.
Final proposal must be received by the Office of Research Administration by September 24, 2018 at 5:00pm EST.
Final proposal must be received by the sponsor by October 1, 2018 at 5:00pm EST.