Research Grants & Funding

Grant Opportunity

Purpose

Deadline

NSF Transforming Undergraduate Education in Science, Engineering and Mathematics (TUES)

Program Announcement

• Creating Learning Materials and Strategies
• Implementing New Instructional Strategies
• Developing Faculty Expertise
• Assessing and Evaluating Student Achievement
• Conducting Research on Undergraduate STEM Education

Varies depending on type but May 28 2013 is most likely deadline

NSF Research and Evaluation on Education in Science and Engineering (REESE)

Program Announcement

• Neural bases of STEM learning
• Cognitive underpinnings of STEM learning
• STEM learning in formal and informal settings
• Learning technologies
• Research on Diffusion
• Methods, models, and measures for STEM education and learning research
• Secondary analysis of large datasets
• Broadening participation research

July 2013

NSF Research Experiences for Teachers (RET) in Engineering and Computer Science

Program Announcement

• Build long-term collaborative relationships between both in-service and pre-service K-12 STEM teachers, community college faculty, and the engineering and computer science research community
• Support the active participation of these teachers and future teachers and community college faculty in research and education projects funded by NSF ENG and CISE
• Facilitate professional development of K-12 STEM teachers and community college faculty through strengthened partnerships between institutions of higher education and local school districts
• Encourage engineering and computer science researchers to build mutually rewarding partnerships with STEM teachers and community college faculty

1^st Monday in October

NSF Research Experiences for Undergraduates (REU)

Program Announcement

• Well-defined common focus that enables a cohort research experience for undergraduate students.
• Sites may be based in a single discipline or academic department or may offer interdisciplinary or multi-department research opportunities with a coherent intellectual theme.
• Reflect the unique combination of the proposing organization's interests and capabilities and those of any partnering organizations. Cooperative arrangements among organizations and research settings may be considered so that a project can increase the quality or availability of undergraduate research experiences.
• Important means for extending high-quality research environments and mentoring to diverse groups of students.
• In addition to increasing the participation of underrepresented groups in research, the program aims to involve students in research who might not otherwise have the opportunity, particularly those from academic institutions where research programs in STEM are limited.
• A significant fraction of the student participants at an REU Site must come from outside the host institution or organization, and at least half of the student participants must be recruited from academic institutions where research opportunities in STEM are limited (including two-year colleges).

4^th Wednesday in August

NSF Research in Undergraduate Institutions (RUI)

Program Announcement

• Support high-quality research by faculty members of predominantly undergraduate institutions
• Strengthen the research environment in academic departments that are oriented primarily toward undergraduate instruction
• Promote the integration of research and education

Anytime

NSF Science Learning Centers

Program Announcement

• Large-scale, long-term Centers that create the intellectual, organizational and physical infrastructure needed for the long-term advancement of Science of Learning research. 
• Supports research that harnesses and integrates knowledge across multiple disciplines to create a common groundwork of conceptualization, experimentation and explanation that anchor new lines of thinking and inquiry towards a deeper understanding of learning.
• Advance the frontiers of all the sciences of learning through integrated research; to connect the research to specific scientific, technological, educational, and workforce challenges; to enable research communities to capitalize on new opportunities and discoveries; and to respond to new challenges.

Anytime

NSF Cyberlearning: Transforming Education

Program Announcement

• Integrate advances in technology with advances in what is known about how people learn
• Better understand how people learn with technology and how technology can be used productively to help people learn, through individual use and/or through collaborations mediated by technology
• Better use technology for collecting, analyzing, sharing, and managing data to shed light on learning, promoting learning, and designing learning environments
• Design new technologies for these purposes, and advance understanding of how to use those technologies and integrate them into learning environments so that their potential is fulfilled.
• Of particular interest are technological advances that allow more personalized learning experiences, draw in and promote learning among those in populations not served well by current educational practices, allow access to learning resources anytime and anywhere, and provide new ways of assessing capabilities.
• It is expected that Cyberlearning research will shed light on how technology can enable new forms of educational practice and that broad implementation of its findings will result in a more actively-engaged and productive citizenry and workforce.

December 17, 2012 for Exploration Projects (EXPs)

January 16, 2013 for Design and Implementation Projects (DIPs)

July 15, 2013 for Integration and Deployment Projects (INDPs)

NSF Advancing Informal STEM Learning (AISL)

Program Announcement

The AISL program supports the following research and/or development on learning and learning environments for the future, including, but not limited to:

Learning:

• Expand access to the highest quality STEM resources for all Americans, regardless of geographic location, age, gender, affluence, or academic background and advance out of school participation of Historically Black Colleges and Universities, Hispanic Serving Institutions, and Tribal Colleges;
• Contribute new research and/or development to the knowledge base, models and/or learning strategies that advance informal learning;
• Explore and better understand the models that integrate a variety of learning platforms for targeted audiences and communities.
• Engage the public in novel, real-time, and simulated experiences with scientific phenomena and participation in the collection of scientific data where such data can contribute to scientific discoveries once reserved only for science researchers;
• Create pedagogical links between informal learning and school-based learning that advances more seamless and personalized STEM-learning across settings and that can transcend the time constraints and physical boundaries of traditional education;
• Build capacity of STEM informal education professionals, volunteers, parents, and caregivers, and those who facilitate the learning of others.

Learning environments:

• Advance meaningful STEM engagement through exhibits, programs, and other experiences at science centers, museums, zoos, aquariums, youth and community centers, and many other informal and out-of-school settings;
• Advance the design and development of environments for learning anytime, anywhere, leveraging advances made in adaptive and assistive technologies, virtual and augmented reality, games, visualizations, simulations, mobile phones and computers, and global online social networks;
• Advance science communication to the public via the Internet, broadcast media, podcasting, online scientific databases, and emerging global social learning networks that engage the public, evolve new partnerships, and reach broader audiences

January 2013

NSF Advanced Technological Education (ATE)

Program Announcement

• Promotes improvement in the education of science and engineering technicians at the undergraduate and the secondary school levels (grades 7 through 12).
• Affect specialized technology courses or core science, mathematics, and technology courses that serve as immediate prerequisites or co-requisites for specialized technology courses.
• The curricular focus and the activities of all projects should demonstrably contribute to the ATE program's central goals: producing more qualified science and engineering technicians to meet workforce demands, and improving the technical skills and the general STEM preparation of these technicians and the educators who prepare them.

October 2013

NSF Discovery Research K-12 (DRK-12)

Program Announcement

• Seeks to significantly enhance the learning and teaching of STEM by preK-12 students, teachers, administrators and parents.
• Projects should be framed around a research question or hypothesis that addresses an important need or topic in preK-12 STEM education.
• Emphasis is on research projects that study the development, testing, deployment, effectiveness, and/or scale-up of innovative resources, models and tools.
• Address immediate challenges that are facing preK-12 STEM education as well as those that anticipate a radically different structure and function of pre-K 12 teaching and learning.
• Challenge existing assumptions about learning and teaching within or across STEM fields, envision the future needs of learners, and consider new and innovative ways to support student and teacher learning.
• Projects that hold promise for identifying and developing the next generation of STEM innovators.

LOI: Nov and Oct

Proposal: Jan and Dec

NSF Ethics Education in Science and Engineering (EESE)

Program Announcement

Ethics Education at graduate and advanced undergraduate levels.

Priority areas include but are not limited to:

• Global/international challenges in science and engineering ethics
• A general framework for the ethics of emerging technologies
• Issues of privacy and confidentiality in relation to data mining
• Fields for which there are few resources in ethics education or research
• Ethical issues related to robotics
• Intersection of the choices that society makes between natural resource development and utilization (e.g., energy sources) and environmental consequences
• Ethical issues associated with natural hazards, risk management, decision-making and the role of scientists in defining and negotiating the consequences of natural hazards in the face of scientific uncertainties.

March 2013

NSF Louis Stokes Alliances for Minority Participation

Program Announcement

• Supports sustained and comprehensive approaches to broadening participation at the baccalaureate level.
• Facilitate the production of students who are well prepared in STEM and motivated to pursue graduate education.
• Alliance projects place emphasis on: a) aggregate baccalaureate degree production; b) attention to individual student retention and progression to baccalaureate degrees; and c) successful transfer of URM students from 2-year to 4-years institutions in STEM programs; d) seamless transition of students to graduate schools in STEM. As such, expectations are placed on institutionalizing, disseminating and promoting the replication of strategies and collaborative approaches that have shown success in the transition of undergraduate STEM students to graduate STEM programs.

3^rd Friday in October

NSF CyberCorps: Scholarships for Services (SFS)

Program Announcement

• Seeks proposals that address cybersecurity education and workforce development.
• The Scholarship Track provides funding to award scholarships to students in cybersecurity.
• In return for their scholarships, recipients will work after graduation for a Federal, State, Local, or Tribal Government organization in a position related to cybersecurity for a period equal to the length of the scholarship.
• The Capacity Track seeks innovative proposals leading to an increase in the ability of the United States higher education enterprise to produce cybersecurity professionals.

October 12, 2012

Next cycle is October 2013

NSF Computing Education for the 21^st Century (CE21)

Program Announcement

• Build a robust computing research community, a computationally competent 21st century workforce, and a computationally empowered citizenry.

CE21 thus supports efforts in three tracks:

• Computing Education Research (CER) proposals will aim to develop a research base for computing education.
• CS 10K proposals will aim to develop the knowledge base and partnerships needed to catalyze the CS 10K Project. The CS 10K Project aims to have rigorous, academic curricula incorporated into computing courses in 10,000 high schools, taught by 10,000 well-trained teachers.
• Broadening Participation (BP) proposals will aim to develop and assess novel interventions that contribute to our knowledge base on the effective teaching and learning of computing for students from the underrepresented groups:
• In aggregate, CE21 projects will contribute to our understanding of how diverse student populations are engaged and retained in computing, learn its fundamental concepts, and develop computational competencies that position them to contribute to an increasingly computationally empowered workforce.

1^st Tuesday in April

NSF CISE Computing Research Infrastructure (CRI)

Program Announcement

Drives discovery and learning in the computing disciplines by supporting the creation, enhancement and operation of world-class institutional and community computing research infrastructures.

The CRI program supports two classes of awards:

• Institutional Infrastructure (II) awards support the creation of new computing research infrastructure or the enhancement of existing computing research infrastructure to enable world-class research and education opportunities at the awardee and collaborating institutions.
• Community Infrastructure (CI) awards support the planning for computing research infrastructure, the creation of new computing infrastructure, or the enhancement of existing computing research infrastructure to enable world-class research and education opportunities for broadly-based communities of researchers and educators that extend well beyond the awardee institutions.

Grant Opportunity

Purpose

Deadline

NEA DESIGN Art Works

Program Announcement

Supports the creation of art that meets the highest standards of excellence, public engagement with diverse and excellent art, lifelong learning in the arts, and the strengthening of communities through the arts.

Supports the following four outcomes:

• Creation: The creation of art that meets the highest standards of excellence,
• Engagement: Public engagement with diverse and excellent art,
• Learning: Lifelong learning in the arts, and
• Livability: The strengthening of communities through the arts.

August 2013

NEH Challenge Grants

Program Announcement

Capacity-building.

Institutions may use challenge grant funds to meet both ongoing and one-time humanities-related costs, provided that the long-term benefit of the expenditure can be demonstrated. Award recipients might use federal challenge grant funds, as well as funds raised for matching, for purposes such as the following:

Through the income from endowments or spend-down funds, grantees could use challenge grant funds to support

• Faculty and staff salaries and benefits;
• Acquisitions for collections;
• Faculty, teacher, and staff development;
• Research fellowships;
• Lecture or exhibition series;
• Visiting scholars or consultants;
• Publishing subventions; and
• Preservation and conservation programs.

Through direct expenditure, grantees could use challenge grant funds to support

• Capital expenditures, such as the purchase, construction, or renovation of facilities;
• Acquisitions for collections;
• The purchase of equipment and software; and
• Fundraising costs (totaling no more than 10 percent of challenge grant funds).

May 2013

NEH Digital Humanities Start-Up Grants

Program Announcement

Designed to encourage innovations in the digital humanities. Aims to encourage the development of innovative projects that promise to benefit the humanities.

Start-Up Grants may involve

• Research that brings new approaches or documents best practices in the study of the digital humanities;
• Planning and developing prototypes of new digital tools for preserving, analyzing, and making accessible digital resources, including libraries’ and museums’ digital assets;
• Scholarship that focuses on the history, criticism, and philosophy of digital culture and its impact on society;
• Scholarship or studies that examine the philosophical or practical implications and impact of the use of emerging technologies in specific fields or disciplines of the humanities, or in interdisciplinary collaborations involving several fields or disciplines;
• Innovative uses of technology for public programming and education utilizing both traditional and new media; and
• New digital modes of publication that facilitate the dissemination of humanities scholarship in advanced academic as well as informal or formal educational settings at all academic levels.

September, 2013

NEH Digital Humanities Implementation Grants

Program Announcement

Implementation of innovative digital-humanities projects that have successfully completed a start-up phase and demonstrated their value to the field.

January 2013