Big Proposal Bootcamp

Big Proposal Bootcamp is an 11-week program, kicking off each January and concluding in April, which introduces a small cohort of faculty to the skills to do large-scale, cross-disciplinary proposals and connect them to the diverse resources of support that Pitt has to offer as they develop those proposals.

These large-scale projects are strategic investments that attract the attention of sponsors’ boards of trustees or oversight staff, in the case of a federal agency. They almost always involve institutions distributed across a region or the country. They frequently involve corporate or non-profit partners. And, they increasingly require a wide diversity of disciplinary expertise to be successful. As a result, big proposals are different.

Bootcamp includes guest speakers from across campus who offer research support services related to major elements of big proposals as well “deep dive” case studies with senior faculty who have led successful large-scale proposals. During the program, participants will have the opportunity to develop the outlines of a big proposal, and the series will conclude with a “pitch” competition. The winning pitch will be rewarded with a small prize they can invest in developing their project. The prize amount is less than a PMF Priming award. 

View the list of the 2025 Big Proposal Bootcamp participants »

Bootcamp Logistics
Bootcamp Topics

The agenda will continue to evolve with every cohort, but sessions have covered topics such as:

  • Strategic Context for Big Proposals
  • Team building and team management
  • Broader impacts and broadening participation
  • Intellectual property & technology transfer
  • Corporate and community partner ecosystem
  • Working with foundations
  • Budget & finance
  • Working with proposal development professionals
  • The review process
  • Case studies
Nomination Process

In early November, SVC Rob Rutenbar requests nominations from Deans and the Directors of UCIS, LRDC, and UCSUR of faculty who

(i.) the Deans or Directors think are ready for a next step in the scale of their research activities and

(ii.) who they know are now thinking about either doing something big or want to be part of bigger team efforts going forward. 

If you are a faculty member interested in participating in Big Proposal Bootcamp, please let your Dean, Director, or Associate Dean for Research know of your interest. 

Michael Holland, Vice Chancellor for Science Policy & Research Strategies (mih130@pitt.edu), does keep track of faculty whom he knows are interested, and we include their names as a courtesy in SVC Rutenbar’s November nomination request for their Dean’s or Director’s consideration.

Meeting Times

Weekly meetings are held at times that works for the majority of participants. For faculty with schedule conflicts that are unresolvable, we always offer a chance to participate in a subsequent cohort.

For conflicts that arise during the semester, we record our sessions (Zoom when virtual, Panopto when live) and make those recordings available to cohort participants to catch up. So that speakers feel free to be as forthcoming as possible, we do not distribute those recordings further.

Success Stories
Melissa Bilec
Melissa Bilec

2019 Bootcamp Participant

Melissa Bilec, a key member of Eric Beckman’s $400,000 Pitt Momentum Funds Scaling Award team, has led a coordinated effort resulting in five NSF Growing Convergence Research (GCR) proposals, securing $1.3 million in funding to date, with the potential to reach $3.6 million. Her $1.6 million project, Convergence Around the Circular Economy, aligns with one of NSF’s 10 Big Ideas, placing her among the first recipients of these prestigious GCR awards. Melissa is an associate professor of Civil and Environmental Engineering and co-director of the Mascaro Center for Sustainable Innovation.

Kevin Binning
Kevin Binning

2021 Bootcamp Participant 

Kevin Binning transformed a $60,000 Pitt Momentum Funds Teaming Award into two federal grants, including a $2 million award from the Institute for Education Sciences. As principal investigator, he is leading Developing a Context-Integrated Mindset/Belonging Intervention to Eliminate Demographic-Based Underperformance in Challenging Large Lecture Undergraduate Courses, expanding his team’s Ecological Belonging intervention across large lecture courses at Pitt. Kevin is an associate professor in the Department of Psychology and a research scientist at the Learning Research & Development Center.

Linda DeAngelo
Linda DeAngelo

2021 Bootcamp Participant

Linda DeAngelo, co-investigator on Kevin’s Pitt Momentum Funds project, is the principal investigator on a $2.4 million NSF award, Collaborative Research: Course-based Adaptations of an Ecological Belonging Intervention to Transform Engineering Representation at Scale. This project expands the intervention to Purdue and UC Irvine engineering schools while integrating faculty development for culturally responsive teaching of underrepresented minority (URM) students. Linda is an associate professor of higher education in the Department of Administrative and Policy Studies and a faculty fellow at the Center for Urban Education.

Michele Reid-Vazquez
Michele Reid-Vazquez

2021 Bootcamp Participant

Michele Reid-Vazquez built on her 2020 $60,000 Pitt Momentum Funds Teaming Award to secure a $175,000 National Endowment for the Humanities (NEH) Summer Institute for Higher Education Faculty grant for Transnational Dialogues in Afro-Latin American and Afro-Latinx Studies. Michele is an associate professor in the Department of Africana Studies at the University of Pittsburgh and a Global Studies Center Fellow.

Cori Richards-Zawacki
Cori Richards-Zawacki

2020 Bootcamp Participant

Cori Richards-Zawacki led a multi-institutional research team—including Pitt, UC-Santa Barbara, UC-Berkeley, University of Nevada Reno, University of Alabama, University of Massachusetts Boston, and Vanderbilt—that secured a 5-year, $12.5 million NSF Biology Integration Institute award in 2021 for Uncovering Mechanisms of Amphibian Resilience to Global Change from Molecules to Landscapes. Her success was supported by OSVCR, which provided proposal development coaching from McAllister & Quinn, red team reviews, and reverse site visit coaching for both her 2020 submission and its 2021 revision. Cori participated in the 2020 Big Proposal Bootcamp, winning her cohort’s pitch day competition prize. She was also a recipient of a 2020 Central Research Development Fund (CRDF) award, the precursor to the Pitt Momentum Funds.