NSF CAREER Workshop
National Science Foundation (NSF) CAREER Workshop: Developing, Implementing, and Writing a High-Quality CAREER Proposal and Integrated Research and Education Plan (IRP) in a Broader Impacts Paradigm
The Faculty Early Career Development Program (CAREER) is a NSF Foundation-wide activity. The CAREER offers NSF’s most prestigious awards in support of early-career faculty who have the potential to serve as academic role models in research and education and to lead advances in the mission of their department or organization. Activities pursued by early-career faculty should build a firm foundation for a lifetime of leadership in integrating education and research (NSF 17-537).
To achieve this award faculty must not only show great promise in their research but must also provide a compelling answer to what is their professional identity or broader impacts (BI) identity? BI identity is equivalent to one’s professional identity in the institution. In other words, to be successful at obtaining a CAREER award one must explicitly answer questions such as “What will be your living- legacy?”, how will you be successful and impactful as a professional, how is what you are doing different from others, and how integrated is your research, teaching, and public service identity?
During this highly interactive workshop participants will be provided with a brief overview of the NSF CAREER, learn what has changed in the solicitation, learn and begin to develop answers to these CAREER questions mentioned above, begin to develop a plan for writing their IRP, write their IRP if they have already been working on their NSF CAREER proposal, be provided with hints on what to include in the NSF CAREER proposal not typically discussed, and learn what other actions should be done to increase their chances of obtaining a CAREER award. Each participant should fill out the Faculty Individual Identity Strategic Assessment Profile (FII-SAP) and bring it to the workshop along with a laptop.
About the Workshop Facilitator: Dr. Michael Thompson is the Founding Director of the Broader Impacts in Research (BIR) organization for the University of Oklahoma. BIR seeks to help all faculty be more impactful and successful in their professional endeavors. BIR also serves as a point of contact to bring institutional and state-wide infrastructure as well as help others gain knowledge and get help in developing, implementing, and evaluating high quality broader impact programs and portfolios for and beyond Agency and National Science Foundation (NSF) Criterion. BIR Website: http://bir.ou.edu/.
In this position Dr. Thompson also advocates for the Scholarship of Broader Impacts (SoBI), conducts research in broader impacts, and Academic Research Impact (ARI). Which allows his organization to model, develop, implement, and evaluate broader impacts by coming up with answers to questions like - (1) what does broader impacts look like on a university, local, regional, global, and international scale and (2) how can you create and implement meaningful faculty professional development that helps all faculty to be more impactful and successful in every aspect of their professional careers? In 2015, Dr. Thompson also served on the National Alliance for Broader Impacts (NABI) Working Group, which developed the Broader Impacts Guiding Principles and Questions for National Science Foundation Proposals. This is a nationally vetted and used document.
