Chemical Education Today
Report
Research Opportunities for Undergraduate Institutions at the NSF Web Site by Donald J. Wink
NSF Information
The National Science Foundation has long included special programs for faculty and students at undergraduate institutions. These fit within the NSF’s research goal and its goal of providing undergraduates with experiences that prepare them for future work in science. As the NSF says, undergraduate research is “the ultimate in inquiry-based learning”. Undergraduates, and those who teach them, are able to use particular programs and opportunities associated with other research to get support for research. The NSF has just issued a new version of an important guidebook for these opportunities, entitled Research in Undergraduate Institutions (RUI). It is online in several formats at http://www.nsf.gov/cgi-bin/getpub?nsf00144. The RUI publication is actually not about a particular grant opportunity. Rather, it brings together several different activities that are “crosscutting” in nature (meaning different NSF Directorates are responsible for supporting the programs). In the first place the program announcement discusses how an investigator at an undergraduate institution can apply to any NSF research program but should also add an “RUI” designation and impact statement to the proposal. Suggestions for team building within and across institutions are included as well. A second example is a proposal for research instrumentation. Again, this would go into a regular
Research in Undergraduate Institutions (RUI) RUI Initiative Home Page: http://www.ehr.nsf.gov/crssprgm/rui/start.shtm RUI Guidebook: http://www.nsf.gov/cgi-bin/getpub?nsf00144 NSF Guide to Programs: http://www.nsf.gov/cgi-bin/getpub?nsf0065
Research Experiences for Undergraduates (REU) REU Program Home Page: http://www.nsf.gov/home/crssprgm/reu/ Program Announcement: http://www.nsf.gov/pubs/2000/nsf00107/nsf00107.htm List of Current REU Sites: http://www.nsf.gov/home/crssprgm/reu/reulist.htm access date: October 15, 2000
instrumentation program at NSF with appropriate RUI documentation. In both cases there are no particular deadlines for RUI proposals as such. Instead, the myriad deadlines for research programs apply. The different programs, with their deadlines, are in the NSF’s Guide to Programs at http:// www.nsf.gov/cgi-bin/getpub?nsf0065. A third area of activity is when a faculty member joins an NSF-funded initiative at a graduate-degree-granting institution through the NSF’s Research Opportunity Award (ROA) program. This requires a request from the NSF-funded program that indicates who will be participating. Thus, investigators from undergraduate institutions get the process started by contacting NSF-funded investigators, not the NSF, first. Searching previous NSF awards is the best place to start, something described in an earlier column (1). In the near future, it may be better for those interested in the RUI initiative to make use of resources at the initiative’s own Web page, http://www.ehr.nsf.gov/crssprgm/rui/start.shtm. That site currently contains the program announcement, suggestions on finding the right program, and proposal writing suggestions. There are also several links “not yet available” (in September 2000) on statistics, awards searching, and making connections for ROA. Once this page is complete, this should be a very helpful resource. Another undergraduate-targeted program is described in the solicitation for Research Experiences for Undergraduates. This has its own program announcement, NSF 00-107, online http://www.nsf.gov/pubs/2000/nsf00107/nsf00107.htm. This supports sites that wish to support undergraduate research and is not restricted to undergraduate institutions. Sitebased awards in this program have a September 15 deadline; REU supplements (as with the ROA program cited earlier) come from an individual researcher to a research directorate program director. The REU program has its own Web site at http://www.nsf.gov/home/crssprgm/reu/, including a list of current REU sites broken down by discipline and location, given at http://www.nsf.gov/home/crssprgm/reu/reulist.htm. Literature Cited 1. Wink, D. J. J. Chem. Educ. 1998, 75, 677.
Donald J. Wink teaches in the Department of Chemistry, University of Illinois at Chicago, 845 West Taylor Street, Chicago, IL 60607;
[email protected].
JChemEd.chem.wisc.edu • Vol. 77 No. 12 December 2000 • Journal of Chemical Education
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