DEB Virtual Office Hour: CAREER Solicitation

About the series

Virtual Office Hours: CAREER Solicitation

On Monday, May 13th, 1 – 2pm ET DEB held its latest Virtual Office Hour: CAREER Solicitation. DEB Program Officers discussed the CAREER Solicitation (NSF 22-586). Upcoming DEB Virtual Office Hours are announced ahead of time on DEBrief, so we suggest you also sign up for blog notifications. 

If you couldn't make it to this or any future office hours, don’t worry! Come back to the blog afterwards, as we post recaps and the presentation slides of all office hour sessions. Alternatively, visit our Office Hours homepage for slideshows and recaps of past topics. Slides will also be made available here. 

Virtual Office Hours are on the second Monday of every month from 1 – 2pm ET.

Presentation outline

Division of Environmental Biology NSF staff in attendance today:

Chris Balakrishnan (host) – Systematics and Biodiversity Science
Steve Dudgeon - Population and Community Ecology
Carolyn Ferguson – Systematics and Biodiversity Science

Resources:

DEB Virtual Office Hour DEB Office Hours: second Monday of each month, 1-2pm Eastern
DEB Blog posts upcoming topics, registration, and recap posts: https://debblog.nsfbio.com/office-hours/
Sign up for BIO News and Updates
Volunteer to review DEB: https://www.surveymonkey.com/r/DEBexpertise
Find recent BIO funding opportunities

Proposal & Award Policies & Procedures Guide (PAPPG)

NSF 24-1: Effective for proposals submitted or due on or after May 20, 2024. See the PAPPG for more information.

Check out this NSF webinar for summarizing updates to the PAPPG: https://nsfpolicyoutreach.com/2024pappg-webinar/

CAREER Proposals: Overview

Supports early career faculty (e.g., pre-tenure), helps to build a foundation for a lifetime of leadership in research and education
- Both research and teaching plans are outlined
- Teaching/research integration is vitally important
Submit to this NSF 22-586, indicate a secondary review directorate and cluster/program
- Foundation-wide program, but reviewed by topic-specific directorate
Full proposal submission deadline: 24 July 2024
Only one proposal submitted at each competition, a total of three competitions may be entered by applicant
- Must be un-tenured as of the proposal submission deadline
- No previous CAREER award

CAREER Proposals: Structure of Your Submission

Contain all sections that one would see in a regular proposal: Intellectual Merit, Broader Impacts, reporting on previous support, Data Management Plan, etc.
- Safe and Inclusive Fieldwork Environments for off-site research NOT required upon submission
Has some unique aspects, such as an elaborated education plan, and a letter of support from a department chair
- A letter of support is not a letter of recommendation
No Co-PI on the cover page
- This does not mean that no collaborators are allowed, refer to them and their letters of collaboration
Proposals to BIO, minimum request is $500,000

How are CAREER Proposals evaluated?

Intellectual Merit

Potential to advance knowledge within/across fields
Creative, original, potentially transformative concepts
Well-reasoned and organized ideas and experiments
Qualified investigators
Access to adequate resources

Broader Impacts

Potential to benefit society
Promote training and education
Enhance infrastructure resources
Engage in outreach to the community
Broaden participation of underrepresented groups in STEM

Integration of teaching and research plans

CAREER Proposals: Budgets...

Personnel salaries and wages: <2 months/yr for PI
Fringe benefits
Equipment
Travel
Participant support
1. No indirect costs applied
2. What goes in participant support, stays in participant support
Other direct costs, including materials and supplies, publications, consultant services, computer services, and subawards
Indirect costs are federally negotiated

Essential Documents

Division of Environmental Biology (DEB)

Ecosystem Science: Ecosystem structure and function across spatial and temporal (including paleo) scales
Population and Community Ecology: Conceptual understanding of population ecology, species interactions and community dynamics
Evolutionary Processes: Evolutionary dynamics and their consequences
Systematics and Biodiversity Science: Diversity, systematics, and evolutionary history of extant/extinct organisms in natural systems

BRC-BIO Building Research Capacity of New Faculty in Biology (NSF 22-500)

Who: Primary investigators must hold at least a 50% tenure-track (or tenure-track equivalent) position as an assistant professor (or equivalent rank), who are untenured, have both research and teaching components to their appointment, and are within the first three years of their appointment.
What: Proposed projects should enable the establishment of research programs for new faculty to position them to apply for future grants to sustain their research and should also enrich undergraduate research experiences and thereby grow the STEM workforce.
Where: Minority-serving institutions (MSIs), predominantly undergraduate institutions (PUIs), and other universities and colleges that are not among the nation’s most research-intensive and resourced institutions.
When: Proposal windows are May 1 – July 1 2024

Q&A notes

If you were unable to attend, here are some of the questions asked during the Q & A section:

Can a CAREER proposal be submitted that aligns with a Dear Colleague Letter (DCL)? How should I highlight that in the proposal, and is there any distinction in how they are evaluated?

CAREER is a stand-alone solicitation so you cannot respond to a DCL or other special program. In your proposal, you can still highlight NSF priorities as part of your broader impacts.

Per the 22-586 solicitation it only says the proposers must be untenured at the annual deadline, there is no statement that the proposer must remain untenured through Oct. 1 following submission, as presented. Please verify this eligibility criterion.

Our presentation included inaccurate information. Tenure status as of the proposal submission deadline (24 July 2024) is used to determine your eligibility.

For postdocs who have no or limited teaching/mentoring opportunities, are they encouraged to try CAREER now or wait until they are in a better position in terms of teaching/mentoring?

You must be in a tenure track position or equivalent, postdocs are not eligible. Though this varies by individual circumstances, it may be beneficial to not apply in your first year as a PI at your new institution. Taking some time to settle in at your new institution and to understand the resources and curriculum opportunities within your institution and your local community could help you identify where you could have the greatest impact when integrating your teaching and your research. Additionally, you only have three chances to apply for the CAREER and waiting to understand those opportunities lends itself to better submissions.

Should we talk to a program officer about our CAREER proposal before submitting?

You do not have to, but you can. We welcome you to email a PO and we can set up a time to chat. In general, it is best to approach a PO with a one-page summary of your project objectives.

If a previous submission was not awarded, how should one approach a resubmission in terms of addressing panel reviews?

Reach out to the Program Officer who managed the proposal, and they can provide you with information if your panel summary or reviews are not clear. You should address comments/concerns that were weaknesses in the proposal with an emphasis on key issues raised in the panel summary. Whether or not you include a “Response to Previous Reviews” section is up to you, but if you do include such a section, we encourage you to keep in short and to the point.

Are there other smaller opportunities besides the BRC-BIO solicitation that would be helpful?

Within the DEB Core solicitation (NSF 24-543) , there is a new type of proposal called the STAR grant. There are projects with total budgets of $400,000 or less. STAR Grants may address any topic appropriate for DEB core programs and could include a variety of important research activities that entail a narrower scope and/or reduced costs (e.g., analysis of existing data (including NEON data), theoretical research, synthesis projects, fieldwork projects, etc.). The STAR track should not be used predominately for the collection of preliminary data. STAR Grants may be useful for targeted research projects, including ideas initiated by postdoctoral researchers. The project description for STAR Grants is limited to 10 pages. STAR Grant projects will be assessed based on the same merit review criteria as all other proposals.

Additional questions can be found here on our previous recap post.

Please reach out to a PO if you have any questions about the proposal submission and review process in DEB programs. NSF has suggested 5 tips on working with Program Officers as part of the NSF 101 series on our Science Matters blog.

Check out the upcoming office hour topics below and be sure to check back here or on the NSF Events Page for information on how to register. Our next Virtual Office Hour, on June 10^th from 1pm-2pm Eastern Time, will focus on the merit review process and how to get involved with NSF.