College of Engineering Grant Development Manager Completes Doctorate Degree

News Release — January 27, 2022 — Monica Kessel, the grant development manager for the College of Engineering, completed her Ed.D. in Leadership and Innovation with Arizona State University in December.

Kessel has been working on her degree for three years and her dissertation, “Enhancing Engineering Early-Career Faculty Awareness of Research Grant Writing Using an On-Demand, Online Intervention,” was published on ProQuest.

“One of my areas of interest is early-career faculty because they are under a lot of pressure to acquire grant funding. They have a lot of constraints put on them to perform, particularly in engineering because of the tenure and promotion process,” Kessel said. “Within the academic research and development system, it’s very competitive, particularly in healthcare and engineering.”

For her dissertation, Kessel developed five online modules that used real-world grant topics to provide faculty members with on-demand writing professional development. Kessel tested her modules on early career engineering faculty and then used surveys and interviews to collect data on the impact the modules had on users.

“Most people, they graduate with their Ph.D., but a lot of them haven’t been trained to write grants for various federal agencies,” she said. “Nor have they been trained to grant write at such a competitive level.”

Since Kessel began developing the modules for her intervention, the Grant Writers’ Network at Utah State that she is a part of has started creating online modules to be used campus-wide. Kessel is excited about this resource which will be available to all faculty.

“It is really helpful and important that the USU Grant Writers’ Network is now going to have some online support for faculty going forward,” she said.

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Writer: Matilyn Mortensen, matilyn.mortensen@usu.edu, 435-797-7512

Contact: Monica Kessel, monica.kessel@usu.edu, 435-797-7125