2021 NSF CISE Proposal Development Workshop: Increasing Participation and Competitiveness of Minority-serving Institutions

American Society For Engineering Education, Washington DC

Investigators

Abstract

The American Society for Engineering Education (ASEE) will conduct a Proposal Development Workshop for teams of researchers working at Minority-serving Institutions (MSIs). The workshop’s goal is to increase the participation of MSIs in the National Science Foundation’s (NSF) Computer Science and Engineering (CISE) core programs. NSF has recruited a three-member steering committee to host a series of workshops in fall 2020, focusing on individual constituent groups: (a) historically black colleges and universities (HBCUs), (b) Hispanic Serving Institutions (HSIs), and (c) Native-serving Institutions. The purpose of these workshops is threefold: (1) to identify research ideas for NSF CISE core programs, (2) to form research teams among researchers from MSIs, and (3) to begin the groundwork on grant proposals. The participant teams that form during these first three workshops will have the opportunity to apply to participate in the 2021 ASEE Proposal Development Workshop. The Proposal Development Workshop will be held in the Washington, DC area in late winter/ early spring 2021. ASEE estimates hosting roughly 96 participants. The Proposal Development Workshop will increase the capacity of researchers from MSIs to produce competitive proposals through a program of instruction, practice, and review. The instruction will include interactive training sessions on how to convey intellectual merit and broader impact and how to compose budgets and budget justifications. Practice sessions will include research teams working together on these key proposal areas. Researchers with track records of success in implementing NSF CISE core programs will review the proposals and provide feedback. Following the conclusion of the workshops, participants will provide feedback through an online survey, distributed after the Workshop ends. ASEE will produce a summary of the meeting that includes synopses of the plenary talks, analyses of relevant discussions, and results from the post-event survey. The Workshop is intended to encourage partnerships among MSIs that support the submission of competitive research proposals to computer and information science and engineering programs. This award reflects NSF's statutory mission and has been deemed worthy of support through evaluation using the Foundation's intellectual merit and broader impacts review criteria.