Rice University will host two annual two-day workshops titled "Capacity Building for Competitive S-STEM Proposals" with the broad goal of improving the competitiveness of submissions to the National Science Foundation Scholarships in Science, Technology, Engineering and Mathematics (NSF S-STEM) program from predominantly undergraduate institutions (PUIs), with emphasis on those located in states and jurisdictions that are part of the Experimental Program to Stimulate Competitive Research (EPSCoR) program. PUIs include associate's colleges, baccalaureate colleges, and master's colleges, as well as doctoral institutions that award a limited number of terminal degrees in STEM disciplines supported by NSF. EPSCoR was established by NSF in 1978 to "stimulate competitive research in regions of the country that were less able to compete successfully for research funds." A total of 120 invited participants will be supported to attend the two workshops, which will be held in 2017 and 2018. Building on the team member requirements in the S-STEM solicitation, participants will apply to and participate in the workshop in pairs: principal investigators (PIs) and researchers (educational, social/behavioral, discipline-based educational, or institutional). Workshop content will be delivered by a team of experienced S-STEM PIs, educational researchers, STEM faculty members, administrators, and practitioners. Participants will engage in hands-on activities and receive real-time feedback as they develop sections of their proposals onsite.
Potential broader impacts of this activity include (1) increased geographical diversity of S-STEM awarded institutions; (2) enhanced institutional diversity among S-STEM awardees; and (3) more industry and academia partnerships, including partnerships among public and private as well as teaching and research institutions. Other anticipated outcomes of this project include an increase in the fraction of S-STEM awards made to institutions in EPSCoR states that are represented by workshop participants and those that qualify as PUIs (using the 2016 federal fiscal year as a baseline); and that participants will report improved perspectives, knowledge, and awareness of quality partnerships with industry and/or other institutions. The research component of the project will advance knowledge on barriers to success specific to the targeted institutions, which will yield information NSF can use to strategically implement outreach efforts for S-STEM and other educational research programs and that PUIs can use to overcome those barriers. It will also advance knowledge on the quality and extent of partnerships at the core of S-STEM projects and the degree to which partnership experiences enhance faculty development experiences. Primary (e.g. participant application materials and surveys) and secondary (e.g. the NSF awards database) sources will be used to collect quantitative and qualitative data to inform both the research and evaluation components of the project.
