NSF Accelerating Discovery: Educating the Future STEM Workforce (AD)
A well-prepared, innovative science, technology, engineering, and mathematics (STEM) workforce is crucial to the Nation’s prosperity and security. Future generations of STEM professionals are a key sector of this workforce, especially in the critical scientific areas described in the Big Ideas for Future NSF Investments. To accelerate progress in these areas, the next generation of STEM professionals will need to master new knowledge and skills, collaborate across disciplines, and shape the future of the human-technology interface in the workplace. As a result, NSF recognizes the need to support development of and research on effective educational approaches that can position the future STEM workforce to make bold advances in these Big Ideas.
In response to this need, the NSF’s Education and Human Resources Directorate seeks to invest in projects that can educate the STEM workforce to advance discovery in the six research Big Ideas: Harnessing the Data Revolution; The Future of Work; Navigating the New Arctic; Multi-messenger Astrophysics; The Quantum Leap; and Understanding the Rules of Life. In addition to developing and implementing novel educational and/or training programs, these projects should simultaneously generate new knowledge about effective STEM education, by studying such programs and exploring related issues.
- Full Proposal Window: April 2, 2018 – January 16, 2019
- https://www.nsf.gov/funding/pgm_summ.jsp?pims_id=505552&org=NSF&sel_org=NSF&from=fund
NSF Biological Anthropology
The Biological Anthropology Program supports multifaceted research to advance scientific knowledge of human biology and ecology, including understanding of our evolutionary history and mechanisms that have shaped human and nonhuman primate biological diversity. Supported research focuses on living and fossil forms of both human and nonhuman primates, addressing time scales ranging from the short-term to evolutionary, encompassing multiple levels of analysis (e.g., molecular, organismal, population, ecosystem), conducted in field, laboratory, captive, and computational research environments, and often incorporating interactions between human biology and culture. Areas of inquiry that promote understanding of the evolution, biology, and adaptability of our diverse species include, but are not limited to: genetic/epigenetic/genomic variation and relationship to phenotype; ecology and socioecology; 1 functional anatomy and skeletal biology; and paleoanthropology and primate paleontology. Multidisciplinary research that integrates biological anthropology with related anthropological fields, such as archaeology, cultural anthropology, and forensic anthropology, also may receive support through the Program.
- Proposal due date: January 22, 2019
- https://www.nsf.gov/pubs/2018/nsf18504/nsf18504.pdf
NSF Research Coordination Networks in Undergraduate Biology Education (RCN-UBE)
The goal of the RCN program is to advance a field or create new directions in research or education by supporting groups of investigators to communicate and coordinate their research, training, and educational activities across disciplinary, organizational, geographic, and international boundaries. The RCN-UBE program originated as a unique RCN track to “catalyze positive changes in biology undergraduate education” (NSF 08-035) and is now supported by the collaborative efforts of the Directorate for Biological Sciences (BIO) and the Directorate for Education and Human Resources (EHR). It has been responsive to the national movement to revolutionize undergraduate learning and teaching in the biological sciences as described in the “Vision and Change in Undergraduate Biology Education” report. The RCN-UBE program seeks to improve undergraduate biology in different areas by leveraging the power of a collaborative network. The theme or focus of an RCN-UBE proposal can be on any topic likely to advance the goal of enhancing undergraduate biology education. Collectively, the program has contributed to developing and disseminating educational research resources and modules, to forging of new collaborations, and to sharing of best practices and ideas for scalability and sustainability of activities. These efforts have involved a large cadre of faculty, students, and other stakeholders. Proposed networking activities directed to the RCN-UBE program should focus on a theme to give coherence to the collaboration
- Proposal Due Date: January 22, 2019
- https://www.nsf.gov/pubs/2018/nsf18510/nsf18510.pdf
Questions? Contact the OSP Proposal Development Team