Christopher Moore is an Assistant Professor of Physics at Coastal Carolina University. He lives in Myrtle Beach, SC with his wife and two children.I attended two workshops today on funding: the first for the National Science Foundation and the second for the private Research Corporation. Just these two workshops were worth the price of admission for this conference.
The first 15 minutes of the NSF workshop was boring organizational charts outlining deadlines and other stuff that I know from having glanced at the NSF website. The meat, however, concerned writing a successful proposal and how proposals are scored. Below is what I have from my terse notes. Do not consider this an in-depth treatment or a detailed guide to landing NSF support. It is merely what I believe to be the highlights of the workshop.
Before putting pen to paper do the following:
(1) Search the awards database
(2) Investigate the program website
(3) Contact the program director
The 3rd point was the most surprising to me. The program director presenting the workshop stressed this last point several times later, as well. She recommended sending a short 1 or 2 paragraph description of your project to the director.
In the text of the proposal the following things need to be clear:
(1) Why do the work?
(2) Why you and not someone else?
(3) What are strengths of the proposal? It was streessed that you do this in the summary.
(4) Convince the reviewers that your project is worthy of funding.
(5) Be clear. Apparently, the NSF receives a large percentage of proposals that leave reviewers stumped as to what the project actually entails.
Common pitfalls for proposals are:
(1) Not using the specified font. (Really!)
(2) References not up-to-date, improper format, etc.
(3) Lack of biographical sketch or very poor bio.
(4) Lack of intellectual merit AND broad impact statements in the summary.
(5) Failure to discuss results of prior NSF support in the project description.
The main points that I gathered from the workshop are that the broad impact items (such as the educational mission) are VERY important, and that many people fail to address this area. The most common reasons for not receiving funding is that the reviewers feel the research is only an incremental contribution, a weak educational component, a lack of expertise, poor fit for the program, or simple bad luck.
I was surprised that the funding rates were so high, though. Overall, 22% of proposals are funded each year. For new PIs that have never submitted before, the rate is 16%. This is not nearly as bad as I had been led to believe in grad school.
I’m too full from free food to go over the Research Corporation workshop right now, so it will have to wait until tomorrow. Hopefully I’ll get a chance to go over the workshops put on by Lillian McDermot and Eric Mazur tomorrow, as well. Both were excellent.