This obejctive of this grant is to provide training for a post-doctoral level scientist in the operations of Behavioral, Cognitive, and Social sciences programs at NSF. The organization the PI represents, the Society for Research in Child Development, is one of 26 scientific organizations whose Fellows participate in the Science and Technology Fellowship program of the American Association for the Advancement of Science. The junior scientist selected for the Behavioral, Cognitive, and Social Sciences Division will be the first SRCD fellow to complete her training at the National Science Foundation. This training will include participating in NSF outreach activities, as well as training in the operations and responsibilities of program officers, proposal reviewers, and panelists. In addition, the SRCD fellow selected for this placement has developed a strong relationship with a charter school in Utah serving students from historically underrepresented ethnic groups. Maintaining and strengthening this relationship will not only allow the SRCD fellow to continue the development of a research program, but will also facilitate NSF's goals of broadening the participation of historically underrepresented populations in scientific inquiry .
One of the major goals of the PI's organization is to assist policy makers understand the importance of basic developmental science and how that science can be used in formulating policies to benefit children and their families. Part of SRCD's philosophy is that one means by which this goal can be achieved is through the SRCD Policy Fellowships. The general goals of SRCD fellowships are to (a) contribute to the use of basic developmental and learning science in developing public policy, (b) educate the scientific community in the development of public policy, and (c) establish effective liasons between scientists and the federal policymakers. The placement of an SRCD Fellow at NSF is therefore likely to facilitate the intellectual and career growth of a promising developmental scientist and help develop a model for next generation scientist-scholars who are better prepared than in the past to forge links among basic educational and developmental science, science policy, and social policy.
