NSF CAREER Grant - Q&A

Last week, ORDE held a seminar on the National Science Foundation's (NSF) Faculty Career Development Award (CAREER). Participants asked a host of good questions, and we've shared many of them below along with some responses and resources for further edification.

How do I reach out to/work with the Program Officer (PO)?
Identifying and working with a PO is important for understanding if your project is a good fit for an agency. The NSF and the CAREER program is no exception.  As Robert Porter suggests in his article, Can We Talk? Contacting Grant Program Officers, begin by sending an email to the PO for the directorate in which you're interested. Briefly, describe your project and ask to schedule a follow-up call.  Have a one-page description of your project ready in case the PO asks for it. You don't want to make them wait once you've sparked their interest.

How long can the letter of collaboration be?
The CAREER program announcement for 2015 and 2016 has few changes from the previous program announcement, but one of these changes is the requirements for the letter of collaboration.  The NSF has limited the letter of collaboration to one sentence. They actually require applicants to use the following sentence and just to fill in the blanks:

"If the proposal submitted by Dr. [insert the full name of the Principal Investigator] entitled [insert the proposal title] is selected for funding by the NSF, it is my intent to collaborate and/or commit resources as detailed in the Project Description."

As the sentence suggests, you should include the details of your collaboration in your project description.

What other career-oriented grants are offered at other agencies?
Many agencies offer career grants that are intended for early career investigators, but they vary widely. Some of these are mentored grants meant to move the investigator to independence (e.g., some of the NIH's K grants). Others are for independent investigators launching their research career (e.g., the NSF CAREER award). You can get a sense of some of the different career grants from ORDE's New Investigator's funding e-book.

What are success rates by directorate?
It is difficult to find success rates for the CAREER grant by directorate, but Dr. Sonia Esperanca offered some data in her presentation for the NSF Denver conference in the Spring of 2014. According to her chart on slide 12, in 2013, Computer & Information Science and Engineering (CISE) had the highest success rate (near 25%) and the lowest was Social, Behavioral, and Economic Sciences (SBE) (near 8%).

How important are preliminary data and publications when applying?
Certainly, this is hard to answer in a straight-forward way, but we asked Professor Michael Jacobson, who recently served as a Program Officer for the NSF. He suggests that competitive applicants should have some preliminary data when submitting their CAREER, because the PI should be able to show their expertise and would likely not be working on a brand new project. In terms of publications, Dr. Jacobson thinks that some are necessary, and those that show independence from one's mentor are looked at more favorably.

Resources:
ORDE NSF CAREER Award Toolkit
NSF CAREER and PECASE Page