The Nation's two-year colleges (2YCs) educate a substantial and rapidly growing number of undergraduate students, including a significant number of students in STEM fields. Furthermore, the racial, ethnic, and geographic diversity of students served by 2YCs make these institutions key entry points to STEM fields for students who have been historically underrepresented. While 2YCs serve large numbers of STEM students, the number of NSF Course, Curriculum, and Laboratory Improvement (CCLI) proposals from and awards to these institutions remains disproportionately low.
This project is developing and implementing a grant writing workshop and mentoring program for STEM faculty from 2YCs. Project components are designed to address the barriers to participation in CCLI faced by 2YC faculty and, as such, to address the disproportionately small number of CCLI awards made to these institutions. The overall goals of the project are to broaden awareness of the CCLI program as a resource for 2YCs and to increase the number of CCLI awards to these institutions. A specific focus of the project is on faculty from rural 2YCs that have not had previous NSF funding. By enhancing participation of target faculty in the CCLI program, the project is directly impacting 2YC faculty and students through improved curricula, pedagogy, and instrumentation. Furthermore, by broadening the CCLI community to include institutions not previously represented, the project is seeking to further facilitate collaboration between 2YCs and the broader undergraduate STEM community.
The overall goal of this project was to provide professional development to two-year college (TYC) faculty in the area of NSF grant proposal preparation and submission. The project was specifically designed to increase participation of TYC faculty in the NSF Course, Curriculum, and Laboratory Improvement (CCLI) and subsequent Transforming Undergraduate Education in STEM (TUES) programs. The project recruited 47 TYC faculty (mostly 2 person teams) from across the country and from a range of STEM disciplines to attend a 2.5 day grant writing workshop in Reno, NV in July 2010. The workshop was led by a project team that included former NSF program officers and others experienced in grant writing and NSF programs. In addition to sessions devoted to strategies for writing more effective TUES proposals, participants were paired with a member of the project team who served as an individual mentor and adviser. Mentors worded with participants both during and following the workshop to help them prepare and submit their own curriculum development proposal to the TUES program in May of 2011. Of the original 25 participant teams, 14 submitted TUES proposals in May 2011. Analysis of panel reviews from all submitted proposals demonstrated that while only one project was funded, the other proposals were regarded by reviewers as competitve. As part of a no cost extension, mentors worked with seven of the declined projects to revise and resubmit to TUES in May 2012. These resubmissions were again found to be competitive although none were funded by NSF. Evaluation of participant perceptions regarding their involvement in the project demonstrated a high degree of satisfaction. Participants indicated that they came into the project with some interest but little or no knowledge in grant writing. Overwhelmingly, they said that participation in the project had significantly increased their interest, knowledge, and confidence to pursue external funding through grant writing. The majority of participants indicated that they found the quality of the mentoring provided by the project to be high or very high. Several indicated in comments that without the assistance of their mentor they would not have been able to prepare and submit their proposal. Finally, one of the questions examined by the project related to the current barriers TYC faculty face in pursuing grant funding for projects related to improving STEM teaching and learning. Perhaps not surprisingly, participants - both those who submitted and those that did not – identified lack of time as the main barrier. Many noted that their heavy teaching loads made it difficult to have extended time to work on a grant proposal. While a few were able to obtain release time from their administration and a few others were able to rely on assistance from their grants office, most participants found it necessary to do the grant writing on their own time. The other major barriers identified by participants (particularly those that did not submit) were related to lack of administrative or grants office support on thier campus. We found that this lack of support directly correlated with the level of past grant writing experience on the campus. For many or our participants, their TUES proposal was the first NSF proposal the institution had submitted and, in some cases, the first federal grant proposal of any kind.
