SUNY NSF Broader Impacts Virtual Workshop

SUNY NSF Broader Impacts Virtual Workshops

April 23, 2021 -- 9:30 am to 4:00 pm

SUNY is partnering with the NSF sponsored Center for Advancing Research Impacts in Society (ARIS) to provide Broader Impacts training for any faculty working on NSF grants or faculty wanting to learn more about Broader Impacts, and how to communicate the relevance of their research to broader audiences and faculty interested in writing a CAREER Award proposal.

Broader Impacts are an essential part of every NSF proposal and ARIS has provided expert training on how to effectively address this criterion to researchers across the nation.

There is a $50 registration fee for each webinar (you can attend one or both webinars).

Friday, April 23

9:30 am-12:00 pm NSF Broader Impacts 101

1:00 pm-2:30 pm Broadening Participation

2:45 pm-4:00 pm Evaluating Broader Impacts Activities

Broader Impacts 101

Would you like a deeper understanding of NSF’s Broader Impacts (BI) criterion? Would you like tips and strategies for addressing the BI criterion in more compelling (and, hopefully, more fundable) ways? "BI 101" has helped thousands of people make sense of the BI criterion and empowered them to approach their grant-writing with more clarity and confidence. This activity-based workshop will cover the history of the BI criterion, provide strategies for conceptualizing, developing, implementing and evaluating BI activities, and share tips on leveraging existing resources and establishing robust partnerships to build your "BI identity."

Broadening Participation

One way to address the NSF's broader impacts requirement is through activities that focus on what the NSF refers to as broadening participation, or "expanding efforts to increase participation from underrepresented groups and diverse institutions throughout the United States." This webinar will explore broadening participation activities, why they are a priority for the NSF, and how to plan, implement and assess them successfully. Several specific examples will be presented and discussed.

Evaluating Broader Impacts Activities

All NSF proposals must not only have a broader impacts component, but a well-articulated plan for evaluating the broader impacts activities that are being proposed. This can present a challenge for investigators who are not trained in program evaluation. This workshop will provide a brief introduction to the basics of program evaluation and connect participants with some tools and resources to help them get started. It will also explore the question of self-evaluation vs. "outsourcing" by working with an external evaluator.

NSF CAREER Awards

The NSF CAREER Award is one of the most important and prestigious grants an early-career faculty member can receive. While all NSF grants (including the CAREER Award) are evaluated on intellectual merit and broader impacts, CAREER Awards also have a unique requirement to present an investigator education plan. This webinar will focus on strategies for developing a competitive NSF CAREER Award, with emphasis on the broader impacts and education plan. This session is for early to mid-career faculty, or those who plan to become faculty at some point in the future).

Broader Impacts Identity

Most researchers are comfortable thinking about and discussing their research identity -- who they are as researchers and what contributions they hope to make to their discipline through their research over the course of their careers. It is far less common, however, for researchers to think about their impact identity -- the lasting impacts they aspire to have on their community and on society, as a whole, through their broader impacts work. This interactive workshop will introduce the concept of a broader impacts identity and walk investigators through a process for starting to define BI identity. While any researcher is likely to benefit from this workshop, it is particularly relevant to early-career researchers (as well as to broader impacts professionals who work with researchers and can play a crucial role in helping them develop their BI identities).