This award supports the conduct of an National Science Foundation Faculty Early Career Development (CAREER) proposal writing workshop. The workshop will be held at a site chosen and hosted by the University of South Florida, April 8 and 9, 2013. It is expected that there will be about 150 attendees. The workshop will have a one-and-a-half-day format including a training session on good proposal writing practices, testimony from previous CAREER awardees, a mock CAREER proposal panel review, and a review session during which the attendees will have a chance to obtain reviews on project summaries of their own draft CAREER proposals. The attendees will also have an opportunity to interact with NSF Program Directors both one-on-one and in mock panels.
This workshop will help to prepare young faculty for careers in education by giving them tools and skills of good proposal writing and by preparing them to write and submit better CAREER proposals. The results of the workshop include training for young faculty, better opportunity for young faculty with an emphasis on women and minority faculty, higher award success rates for the attendees, and ultimately better research resulting from better written proposals.
Delcie R. Durham University of South Florida, Tampa, Florida This Outcomes report is a duplicate of the report submitted by Dr. Bradley Kramer, Kansas State University, the lead university on this collaborative proposal.Sponsored by the Division of Civil, Mechanical, and Manufacturing Innovation (CMII) of the National Science Foundation, the CAREER Proposal Writing Workshop was initiated in 2004 and has bee held each year thereafter. The Workshop aims to provide future CAREER proposal submitters (i.e., untenured junior faculty members as well as post-doctoral fellows, and near-graduation Ph.D. students) with proposal review experience and interactions with NSF program directors and recent CAREER awardees to improve their proposal writing capability. Since its inception, the Workshop has been widely recognized by junior faculty across the country as an excellent venue for educating the next generation academic researchers. Participation in mock panel review sessions and interactions with other workshop participants have been recognized as the major intellectual merit as well as benefit to attendees of the Workshop. The 2013 NSF CAREER Proposal Writing Workshop, held in Reno, Nevada during April 8-9, 2013 and organized by University of South Florida as the local host. The workshop attracted a total of 149 junior faculty members from 94 different universities. During the Workshop, NSF program directors and recent NSF CAREER awardees shared their insight and experience on how to write a winning proposal. The participants were then grouped into individual mock review panels that are designed to simulate the actual proposal review process at NSF. Through such intensive participation in the process and interactions with other participants, an environment was created to promote and facilitate collaborations among the Workshop participants. Such collaborations are likely to positively affect their future career development as researchers and classroom teaching as educators.This in turn helps develop the human resources of the nation, thus broadly impact the society at large. Workshop Evaluation A survey was conducted immediately after the workshop, to gather participants’ evaluation of the workshop. The evaluation results are showing below. Of the 123 attendees who participated in the survey: 1) 96 attendees found the Workshop "Very satisfactory", and 26 found it "Satisfactory", in terms of the learning experience; 2) 109 attendees would "Definitely" recommend the Workshop to future CAREER proposal submitters; 3) 92 attendees gave an overall rating of "Excellent" for the Workshop, and 27 gave it "Very good".
