This award supports an NSF/CISE CAREER Proposal Writing Workshop, to be held as a one-day event in March 2014 in Arlington, VA. The workshop will introduce junior faculty to the NSF CAREER program and provide them with invaluable insights from past awardees and NSF program managers on features of effective CAREER proposals. The objective is to better equip junior faculty to write effective, ultimately successful, CAREER proposals.
The NSF CAREER program is central to NSF efforts to identify, foster and support the nation's most promising junior faculty in research and education. It is well known that junior faculty have had limited experience on grant writing and few opportunities of interaction with NSF program directors. As many faculty learn during their careers, the opportunity to obtain direct insights and feedback from grant awardees and NSF program directors is invaluable to learning how to write effective, ultimately successful, grant proposals. The purpose of this workshop is to provide such a venue for junior faculty to help them jumpstart their academic careers.
A limited number of scholarships will be made available for HBCU and other minority faculty, including women, to attend the workshop. The workshop will be a unique opportunity for such faculty to network with recent NSF CAREER awardees. This will enhance the overall research capabilities of HBCU and other minority faculty to perform cutting-edge research. Additionally, presentation materials (slides, videos, etc.) from the panel sessions will be made available on the workshop website for other junior faculty to download; this will allow the impact of this workshop to reach beyond the direct participants to other junior faculty nationwide.
. The goal of the workshop was to introduce junior faculty to the NSF CAREER program and provide them with direct insights from recent CAREER awardees and NSF program managers on how to write effective CAREER proposals. The workshop provided junior faculty with an opportunity to improve their proposal writing skills as well as have direct interactions and obtain direct feedback from NSF (IIS, CNS, CCF, and ACI) program directors and recent NSF CAREER awardees. To meet these objectives, the workshop's agenda included presentations on proposal writing, experience sharing, and mock panels. The workshop met all these objectives. Specifically, the following outcomes were attained: 1. close to 190 junior faculty attended the workshop. 2. all 27 travel fellowship recipients selected participated 3. all four invited speakers participated and presented highly informative and useful talks of their CAREER grant writing experience 4. participants submitted pre- and post-workshop surveys (managed through supermongo) relating their feedback for positives and what could be improved in other similar workshops. 5. participants were able to interact with program managers and past CAREER recipients, 6. many more junior faculty not attending were able to attend live sessions through google+ capabilities. 7. remote participants also gained access to specific presentations and case studies that were directly available to participants, under a password. 8. all materials were made available through a workshop website designed by the investigators.
