APRIL 2012
I found out during my masters research at Texas State that funding can be hard to come by. In fact, I applied for over a dozen grants during my masters work yet I only received two, and that netted me only $500. Well, $500 barely paid for gas to get me out to my field sites and back, so essentially I ended up spending a lot of my own money.
Starting a new project up here at Ohio University I was fairly nervous that I would run into the same problem. In all, I will probably need a minimum of $10,000 to complete my project over the next 3 years, but in reality, closer to $25,000 would be ideal. The more money I receive the more continuous data loggers I can purchase, which can record soil moisture and temperature for months at a time. These data loggers will help me tie together all of my micro-habitat data as well as help make comparisons with macro-habitat data. However, the most nerve racking aspect of the project was that in order to collect preliminary data this spring I needed at least $2000 to purchase a handheld soil moisture meter and fund my travel to field sites. I also have already had several grant rejections which certainly magnified by nervousness. Well, luckily The Explorers Club came through for me and awarded me the Exploration Fund grant of $2500. The title of my grant proposal was “Exploring below the undergrowth:the role of micro-habitat in the evolutionary ecology of a bioindicator taxon”, which admittedly is a bit over the top. However, given that it was successful, I may be sticking with it, at least for a little while.
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