This collaborative award provides support for the conduct of a NSF proposal writing workshop to be held September 1-2, 2010, at the University of Nebraska-Lincoln, Lincoln, Nebraska. Provision is made for 150 attendees who will be selected from among the applicants giving priority to early career faculty in EPSCoR states, especially Arkansas, Kansas, Nebraska, Oklahoma, South Dakota and Wyoming, whose research will likely receive support from the Division of Civil, Mechanical and Manufacturing Innovation, and to members of underrepresented groups. The workshop will include a lecture on the basics of proposal writing, experiences of recent NSF awardees, and mock panel reviews of actual recent NSF proposals and of the attendees' own proposal summaries.
Previous similar workshops have attracted typically twice as many applicants as can be accommodated at the workshop. Previous attendees have enjoyed significantly higher proposal success rates with their proposals. Thus, it is expected that this workshop will provide information that will enable the attendees to write more competitive proposals and subsequently improve the quality of their research.
Abstract at Time of Award This collaborative award provides support to conduct a NSF proposal writing workshop to be held on September1-2, 2010, at the University of Nebraska-Lincoln. 150 attendees will be selected from a pool of applicants with priority given to early faculty especially from EPSCoR states such as Arkansas, Kansas, Nebraska, Oklahoma, South Dakota and Wyoming and members of underrepresented groups. The workshop will include a presentation by NSF Program Director on the basics of proposal writing, experiences of recent NSF awardees, mock panel reviews of actual recent NSF proposals and their own proposal summaries. In general, the number of interested applicants is twice the actual number which can be accommodated at the workshop sites. The feedback from past workshops have been very positive and a higher success rate of getting awards due to better proposal writing practices learned at these workshops have been mentioned. It is expected that this workshop will also provide sufficient guidelines of writing good and winning proposals to the attendees. Project Outcomes Report Disclaimer This Project Outcomes Report for the General Public is displayed verbatim as submitted by the Principal Investigator (PI) for this award. Any opinions, findings, and conclusions or recommendations expressed in this Report are those of the PI and do not necessarily reflect the views of the National Science Foundation; NSF has not approved or endorsed its content. Intellectual Merit: The main activities of this workshop included a presentation by NSF Program Director on the basics of proposal writing, experiences of recent NSF awardees, mock panel reviews of actual recent NSF proposals, and discussion and improvement of attendees own proposal summaries. NSF has been supporting the organization of this workshop and also very actively participating in all related activies since 2004. All previous workshops , similar to this one, have been well attended. Participants have been benefitted by presentations and interactions with NSF program directors and other attendees. The feedback on this workshop was also very positive in terms of the quality of presentation and interactions with NSF program directors and invited senior faculty. Broader Impacts: This workshop was attended by more than 100 participants including junior faculty, postdoctoral fellows and senior Ph. D. students from institutions across the nation. The workshop provided them an interactive platform for learning to write quality proposals to seek external funding needed for establishing their research programs. It is expected that they will share their experience with their institutional colleagues leading to better prepared research teams. The workshop was aimed at EPSCoR states such as Arkansas, Kansas, Nebraska, Oklahoma, South Dakota and Wyoming and members of underrepresented groups. The workshop was also open to participants from non-EPSCoR states.
