UTA NSF CAREER RESOURCE PAGE
Understanding the NSF CAREER Program & Determining If You’re Ready to Apply
An overview of the NSF CAREER program: eligibility requirements, what it funds, how to apply, etc.
Determining if you’re ready to apply, and what you need to do before you start writing.
Planning your project and writing your concept outline to send to the P.O.
Planning Your Project and Talking to the PO
Why you should talk to your Program Officer, and how to do it.
The secret to planning a strong Education Component: Part 1. Why NSF asks for an Education Component in the CAREER proposal, and strategies to plan your proposed education and outreach projects.
The secret to planning a strong Education Component: Part 2. Best practices and things to keep in mind.
We discuss how to schedule CAREER proposal production so that you have time to write a strong proposal while juggling all of your other responsibilities.
Writing Your Project Description
This Intro and Overview exercise illustrates the difference between “journal article style” writing (Version A) and “proposal style” writing (Version B). Put yourself in the place of the reviewer and think about your reaction to Version A versus Version B.
Outlining your 15-page Project Description and writing your Introduction and Overview section.
Describing Your Intellectual Merit
Making a strong argument for the intellectual merit of your research is critical. While a labeled Intellectual Merit section is no longer required in the Project Description, it’s important to state your arguments early in the Project Description that your research is innovative, significant, and advances the field in clear and specific ways.
Writing the Background Section
We discuss how to position your research in terms of the state of knowledge in your field.
Describing Your Preliminary Results
Preliminary results provide key evidence that your project is likely to succeed. We discuss how to describe your preliminary results concisely.
Describing Your Research Plan
In this section you discuss how you will achieve your goals, answer your research questions, and/or test your hypotheses. We provide tips on how to include enough detail without using too much space and overwhelming your reviewer.
Describing Your Education Plan
We discuss typical structures and the desired level of detail for this section.
Writing Your Broader Impacts Section
Your Project Schedule
Other Project Description sections
Final Checks and Last-Minute Checklist
Other Proposal Components