| NSF Org: |
DUE Division Of Undergraduate Education |
| Recipient: |
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| Initial Amendment Date: | January 17, 2017 |
| Latest Amendment Date: | June 5, 2017 |
| Award Number: | 1708329 |
| Award Instrument: | Standard Grant |
| Program Manager: |
Alexandra Medina-Borja
amedinab@nsf.gov (703)292-7557 DUE Division Of Undergraduate Education EDU Directorate for STEM Education |
| Start Date: | January 15, 2017 |
| End Date: | September 30, 2021 (Estimated) |
| Total Intended Award Amount: | $381,564.00 |
| Total Awarded Amount to Date: | $381,564.00 |
| Funds Obligated to Date: |
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| History of Investigator: |
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| Recipient Sponsored Research Office: |
6100 MAIN ST Houston TX US 77005-1827 (713)348-4820 |
| Sponsor Congressional District: |
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| Primary Place of Performance: |
6100 Main St Houston TX US 77005-1827 |
| Primary Place of
Performance Congressional District: |
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| Unique Entity Identifier (UEI): |
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| Parent UEI: |
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| NSF Program(s): | S-STEM-Schlr Sci Tech Eng&Math |
| Primary Program Source: |
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| Program Reference Code(s): |
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| Program Element Code(s): |
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| Award Agency Code: | 4900 |
| Fund Agency Code: | 4900 |
| Assistance Listing Number(s): | 47.076 |
ABSTRACT
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.
PUBLICATIONS PRODUCED AS A RESULT OF THIS RESEARCH
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PROJECT OUTCOMES REPORT
Disclaimer
This Project Outcomes Report for the General Public is displayed verbatim as submitted by the Principal Investigator (PI) for this award. Any opinions, findings, and conclusions or recommendations expressed in this Report are those of the PI and do not necessarily reflect the views of the National Science Foundation; NSF has not approved or endorsed its content.
Overview
From 2017 through 2019, Rice hosted three workshops with the major goal of improving the competitiveness of S-STEM proposals from predominantly undergraduate institutions (PUIs), minority serving institutions (MSIs) and institutions in Established Program to Stimulate Competitive Research (EPSCoR) jurisdictions.
Intellectual Merit
The research team sought to answer questions about the extent to which participant preference for working in teams was related to participant perceptions of how well the team worked together, the likelihood that participants used partnership strategies, and participant reactions to the workshop itself. They also examined panel summaries for awarded proposals to compare their strengths and weaknesses to those of declined proposals, considering NSF review criteria ? intellectual merit and broader impacts.
Partnerships. The evaluator conducted three surveys: a baseline survey directly at the start of each workshop in 2017, 2018, and 2019, a second survey immediately after the workshop, and a follow-up survey roughly a year after each workshop. The final survey was deployed again in 2021. The results indicated team orientation appeared to be a promising measure for predicting satisfaction with teamwork within the teams examined here. However, low response rates impacted limited the research team?s ability to examine the relationship between these variables and final success in submitting a proposal.
Panel Summaries. The study found reviewers tended to be much more effusive about the benefits of awarded proposals than declined proposals when addressing intellectual merit and team composition. For broader impacts, about the same number of comments was received for awarded and declined proposals, but the tenor of the positive comments was much different; that is, comments in the strengths category for declined reviews tended to be somewhat negative or neutral in tone. Comments about the approach and project plan also tended to differentiate awarded from declined proposals; although positive aspects of both awarded and declined proposals were noted, reviewers pointed out a number of disadvantages for declined proposals (and none for awarded proposals). Interestingly, only panel summaries for declined proposals contained strengths for creative, original, and transformative ideas; no panel summaries of awarded proposals identified strengths in this area. Additionally, in some cases, awarded and declined proposals shared very similar, if not the same, weaknesses. This raises questions for proposals that are declined with relatively high scores (i.e., 4.0 or above). One recommendation from this preliminary work is for program officers to explore more deeply how decisions are made with regards to making recommendations for awards or declines for proposals of similar quality with similar strengths and weaknesses.
Broader Impacts
A total of 68 two-person teams of PIs and researchers attended the workshops; 35 (51%) were at institutions located in EPSCoR jurisdictions; 45 (66%) were from PUIs. Roughly $34M in awards have been made to participants and their institutions. In some cases, the team learned that participants shared information they learned from the workshop with colleagues who subsequently submitted proposals and received funding. Thus, this figure includes S-STEM proposals funded at institutions of the participants, regardless of whether or not the participants themselves appear as PI or Co-PI.
The geographic reach of the workshop and the resulting awards was substantial. Figure 1 shows participants came from ~70% of the US, including Alaska, including 17 EPSCoR jurisdictions. Figure 2 shows the geographic distribution of awards. Both figures also show a breakdown by institution type (MSI, PUI, MSI+PUI, etc.). In Figure 2, larger symbols indicate awards of $1M or more, with all awards totaling roughly $34M.
Summary
Other S-STEM capacity building workshops have been modeled after this one. The project has resulted in two peer-reviewed conference papers and a workshop hosted by the American Association for the Advancement of Sciences (AAAS) to share strategies for addressing research and evaluation requirements in S-STEM proposals.
Last Modified: 03/25/2022
Modified by: Yvette E Pearson
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