The on-going expansion of research in systems engineering and design makes the American Society of Mechanical Engineers (ASME) International Design and Engineering Technical Conferences one of the largest conferences organized by ASME. Every year, many doctoral students and junior faculty attend the conference with the aim of presenting their work and establishing themselves in the community. However, there is a need at these types of conferences to further develop and attract new scholars within the design community. Currently, the main focus of such conferences is on presenting papers, rather than on nurturing advanced doctoral students to successfully transition into design research scholarship positions in academia or in industry. By supporting a career development workshop, this award provides conference participants with information on how to develop a strategic plan for their lifetime and career goals. It will enable graduate students and junior faculty to make a smooth transition into a meaningful career by helping them discover the crucial components of career development and self-representation. In addition, it will increase the enthusiasm of graduate students, postdoctoral fellows, and junior faculty toward their future positions, and teach them significant technical skills as well as communication and leadership skills. Finally, the workshop will continue to foster lines of communication for the Design Engineering community at the national level.
To ensure the continuity and further development of the design engineering community, an NSF CAREER Proposal Writing Workshop will be held at the 2014 ASME International Design Engineering Technical Conferences. In addition to focusing on career development skills, choices, and practices, this workshop will present information about how to develop an effective "CAREER development grant," bringing together a pool of graduate students and leading faculty investigators interested in becoming independent scholars. The workshop is integrated with the Design for Manufacturing and Life Cycle Technical Conference schedule, and will provide participants the opportunity to meet distinguished researchers and educators from a diverse array of interrelated fields within the design community.
A workshop on writing NSF CAREER Proposals was sponsored by the Engineering Systems Design (ESD CMMI) program. The Workshop brought together a pool of 100 national and international students, postdoctoral associates and junior faulty interested in becoming independent scholars in the design and system engineering research domains. The objective was to equip participants selected from the ASME Design Engineering Division (DED) community with formal training in both practical and conceptual aspects of the proposal-writing process. In addition, the workshop aimed at creating an event to ensure further expansion of the ‘young investigator’ design research community through attracting and fostering transition of advanced doctoral students and postdocs into design research scholarship positions in academia or in industry and to promote inter-disciplinary collaboration within the DED community. To address these objectives, the workshop was held as part of the Design for Manufacturing and Life Cycle (DFMLC) technical conference within the ASME IDETC conferences on August 19, 2014 in Buffalo, NY. Integrating the CAREER grant writing workshop with an ASME conference facilitated exposure to critical research needs and motivated participants to use the networking opportunities available for them during the conference week. The workshop was run in two sessions. In the first session, the importance of career planning and guidelines on proposal preparation has been provided by four NSF program officers, while in the second session, two CAREER award winners shared their experiences with the audiences. A post-workshop survey was conducted right after the workshop to collect participants’ feedback on their motivation to submit an NSF CAREER proposal, the workshop potential to benefit their career, the overall quality and usefulness of the workshop and to capture their suggestions on the ways to improve these types of workshops in the future. Based on the survey results, more than 85% of the attendees strongly agreed that participation in the workshop provided them a better understanding of what the CAREER proposal is and 78% of the attendees declared that they are now motivated to submit an NSF CAREER proposal. In addition, 81% of the respondents thought integrating this workshop within a conference was a good idea. The attendees liked the idea of assigning enough time for Q&A and found the stories shared by senior faculty and previous CAREER awardees very helpful. They described a need for a mock review stage, having more time to meet and interact with NSF program officers, and having more of such workshops on future conferences.
