The NSF CAREER Award

If you're a faculty member in the Sciences or Education, you may be aware of the Faculty Early Career Development Program (CAREER) award through the National Science Foundation (NSF). The CAREER grant is a prestigious award offered through all directorates of the NSF. The grant is meant to infuse early career investigators with funding to hit the ground running to develop them as researchers and educators.

ORDE offers a toolkit for those interested in the CAREER, which we've just updated. Below is some initial information:

CAREER AWARD PURPOSE AND BACKGROUND
All NSF directorates participate in the CAREER Program, designed to support junior faculty in their dual roles as teacher-scholars. CAREER Awards provide recipients the opportunity to enhance their professional career development, better integrate their research and education responsibilities, and build academic leadership abilities. While all NSF directorates make CAREER Awards, the number of awards varies significantly by directorate.

The CAREER Award deadlines for 2017 are July 19, 20, or 21 – depending on the NSF directorate to which you are applying. Specific deadline details are found in the CAREER Award program announcement.

Three areas emphasized by NSF program officers and CAREER awardees are:

·         Begin work on a CAREER Award proposal early. This is a very competitive program; NSF is estimating it will make just 450 new and continuing CAREER awards per year for Fiscal Years 2017, 2018, and 2019. It is also unlike any other proposal you will submit to NSF because it involves planning your career objectives and illustrating how the CAREER Award will contribute to your professional development over the next 5, 10, and 20 years.

·         CAREER Awards represent a true balance between your faculty research and education roles. The required educational component may focus on any level: K-12 students, undergraduates, graduate students, and/or the general public. When planning this component, design innovative outreach efforts that go well beyond what you normally do in your faculty role.

·         Partnerships, especially industrial partnerships, are considered a positive aspect, but keep in mind that no co-principal investigators are allowed on CAREER proposals (see discussion under Budget Details on page 5). International collaborations are also encouraged.

Resources:
ORDE CAREER Toolkit
NSF CAREER Website

4 tricks you CAN use to save space in your proposal

It was probably unfair of me to give you a bunch of space-saving tricks last week and tell you not to use any of them, so I thought this week I should dig into some that you can use...

Use active, first-person voice:
Scholars and researchers are often trained to use the passive, third-person in their academic writing.

Here's the difference:
Passive, third-person: The experiment will be conducted by the researcher.
Active, first-person: I will do the experiment.

Why do academics want to use the passive, third person? A couple of reasons: first, it alludes to the objectivity of the research and removes the researcher from the written proposal. Second, it sounds more formal, more appropriate for the expert reviewers. But, I argue that the benefits of the active, first-person outweigh those of the former. First off, it's shorter. I cheated a little bit in my example and changed the verb, but either way, it's going to end up shorter. And when you make these changes to all of your sentences, you'll save a lot of space! Second, active, first-person is easier to read. Any good technical writer worth her word processor will tell you that!

Remove hyperbole:
I recently reviewed a grant proposal where the PI described something as "very, very important." Now, I get that it's hard in a grant proposal to really make things stand out, but this is not the way! Firstly, my loyal blog readers have heard me say this before, but I once had a Technical Writing Professor who said that there is never a good reason to use the word "very," and she had long since banned it from her writing. Her point was that it didn't add anything to the sentence. If something is important, say "it's important." Adding "very," let alone, two of them doesn't articulate anything significantly different. Now, I'll take this a step further even and suggest that not only should our PI cut out the "verys," but I would ask, is there a way you can show that this is important instead of just saying it? Is there a way to structure the description to make it clear to the reader that this is important, so that you don't have to tell them? Now, I've made this argument and lost several times before and I acquiesce that sometimes using this hyperbole cues the reader to pay close attention. So, if you must, say something is important or great or incredible, but please don't say it's very incredible.

Cut sentences that don't have a clear purpose:
I mentioned this last week, but when you're running out of space in your grant proposal, you need to be brutal. This means going through the proposal line by line, and cutting sentences or phrases that aren't really making a difference. They may be eloquent, they may be poetic, but if they're not doing the work of making your case to reviewers, they have to go!

Phone a friend:
So, after you've changed everything to active, first-person, cut out hyperbole, and brutally curtailed your proposal and you still can't find enough room for your amazing diagram (that you're keeping at a size that reviewers can see), it's time to call for reinforcements. You need to find a colleague to go through and tell you what's still in your proposal that isn't necessary and where you can condense.

These tips can help you cull a mostly-written proposal, but another thing to do is create a well-organized plan of attack before you start writing your grant proposal. If you can outline and identify what you want to do in each section first, it'll help you stay out of the weeds in your first draft. That way there will be less you need to cut later on!

Resources:
Top three things to cut from your writing - Kyra Thomsen

5 tricks to save space (that you should never use)

Space limits in grant proposals are one of the most frustrating aspects in grant writing. While you're watching some of your students really stretch to fill paper requirements you give them, you're trying to slim down your compelling case and essential descriptions to meet agency requirements. We all know that culling your words is harder than expanding them (no matter what students think). Here I'll offer the requisite Blaise Pascal quote, "I would have written a shorter letter, but I didn't have the time."

So, you may be excited to learn of what tricks I've identified for saving space, but I'll immediately burst your bubble by saying that you should never ever use these tricks. Ah, that Pandora's Box of grant-writing tips! But, here's why you should not use them. Because, reviewers will immediately discover your tricks and be frustrated by them.

So, here they are...

Shrinking the type: Sure, you can fit more words in the smaller type you use, but at what point are you going to give your reviewers a headache? Be sure to keep your type at 11 point or larger throughout the whole grant.

Shrinking the margins: Genius! If you push your margins out by just a smidgen, you can get that last sentence in there. But, what does that do to the layout of your document? Nobody likes reading something that goes right to the edge of the page. Plus, if you check your agency guidelines, there are probably rules against it.

Cutting the white space: Along with shrinking margins, it's tempting to choose a paragraph structure that eliminates white space between them. But, again, nobody likes reading something where there are no visual breaks. You don't want a reviewer to look at your page and have a feeling of dread. White space is necessary!

Making figures/visuals smaller: So, you've done it! You've crafted the perfect diagram to include in your project overview that will very quickly give your reviewer an understanding of your whole project structure.  Only problem is that, to fit in this visual, you've had to make it so small that your reviewer might not be able to read the ultra-tiny labels and text...So, again that will be annoying and not useful. Give it the room it needs to be easily decipherable or cut it.

Cutting headings/guide posts: So, I'm shooting everything down! How about Headings? Those aren't necessary, right? Well, maybe not, but reviewers don't tend to read through a grant proposal from page one, chronologically till the end. I've heard several NIH reviewers say they start with Specific Aims and then go to the Biosketch. So, given that reviewers are using your grant in this way, offering them indicators, guide posts, headings, and references makes your proposal easier to navigate and easier to read. Easier to read = happier reviewers.

A classic, yet brutal, writers' mantra is to "murder your darlings." This refers to the importance of being ruthless when cutting down your writing. If it's not necessary to include, even if you said it so brilliantly, cut it, save yourself the space, and don't be tempted use the tricks above!

Resources:
Writing Process and Structure - University of Wisconsin Madison