NSF undergraduate education programs, particularly TUES (Trnasforming Undergraduate Education in STEM), provide support for curricular innovations, basic education research, and also support applications in STEM education pedagogy, faculty development, and improvement of education assessment methods, yet few proposals for these funds are submitted in psychology. The present proposal is designed to address this problem through a workshop about NSF education programs and a showcase of projects in psychology supported by TUES. This project is centered on an invited session at the 25th annual convention of the Association for Psychological Science (APS) in Washington, DC (May 23-25). APS is the foremost disciplinary association for psychological science. This session will showcase projects that have been supported by the TUES program and function as a workshop that identifies EHR funding opportunities of possible interest to participants.
In an effort to disseminate information about programs of the Division of Undergraduate Education (DUE) of the National Science Foundation (NSF) and encourage more proposal submissions to these programs, four psychologists who had been co-panelists for the TUES (Transforming Undergraduate Education in STEM) Program, along with Program Director Myles Boylan, organized and presented a symposium at the Annual Convention of the Association for Psychological Science, which occurred in Washington, DC, on May 25, 2013. We had noted the relatively small number of awards in psychology in the TUES Program and wanted to make a presentation at a major psychology convention in order to increase the representation of psychologists among those submitting and receiving DUE grants. To determine whether the symposium was effective in the near term, we administered a questionnaire before and after the symposium. This questionnaire provided some information about the knowledge of attendees and whether it was enhanced by the symposium, along with overall impressions of the informativeness of the symposium (whether participants were satisfied with the event). The symposium consisted of brief (12-15 minutes) presentations by each of the five panel members followed by a period of questions and answers, with the total duration being about 1 hour and 20 minutes. The presentations concerned information about specific DUE programs, possible proposal topics, innovative pedagogies, and tips for preparing effective proposals. The results of our surveys of participants provide evidence for several points. First, there is evidence that at the conclusion of the symposium participants believed they knew more about a number of major issues: NSF-DUE programs, categories of possible proposal topics, high-impact pedagogies in psychology, and the elements of a successful proposal. This enhanced knowledge did not depend on gender, rank, or prior proposal-writing experience of the participant. However, participants with prior experience were somewhat more knowledgeable, as one might expect, both before and after the symposium. Increases in knowledge were slightly greater for programs and categories than for pedagogies and critical elements of a proposal, perhaps because participants knew more about pedagogies and critical elements at the outset of the symposium. Participants gained greater awareness of the NSF-DUE programs that received particular emphasis during the symposium, though they seemed far from certain of their knowledge even of these. They also left the symposium with some uncertainty about the fundability of some items that are actually supported by DUE, such as student scholarships, faculty development, and stipends for graduate students. Finally, the symposium as a whole was judged to be informative, with a mean score of 3.54 out of a possible 4. Thus, there is considerable evidence that those who attended the symposium learned new information about NSF-DUE programs though there are also several reasons to be cautious in interpreting these findings. Our results are based upon 30 completed questionnaires although we estimate that 50-100 people attended the symposium. We also do not know how many attendees will actually submit proposals as a result of this symposium. Such information might be elicited from those who submit proposals in the future.
