Boosting Grant Applications from Faculty at MSIs

Faculty at Minority Serving Institutions (MSIs) make considerable contributions to educating and training science leaders. Yet, the National Science Foundation (NSF) has received few proposals from MSI faculty over time. This project, underwritten by NSF grant no. 2127208, implemented an intervention that supported MSI faculty in two ways. First, MSI faculty were granted time to write and submit proposals to the NSF. Second, faculty were mentored through the proposal preparation process. The project evaluated the impacts of the intervention by collecting and analyzing data from MSI faculty participants. The intervention contributed to NSF proposal submissions by MSI faculty, improved their proposal preparation skills, and contributed to greater inclusion of faculty at MSIs in STEM.

Prior attempts to increase MSI grant applications suggested that proposal mentoring interventions are likely to change behavior through several channels, e.g., information awareness and feedback, role models and networks, cognitive load theory, and metacognitive awareness. Underlying these different theories of change, is a factor that seems to have been taken for granted: faculty’s time availability. This project tackled time constraints by offering MSI faculty mentees a course buyout to write proposals and address other constraints through intensive mentoring, workshops, and debriefing. The effect of the intervention was evaluated using both quantitative and qualitative data analyses. Impacts were assessed by comparing different outcomes, in particular proposal submissions to NSF, before and after participating in the intervention across a treatment group of mentees and a control group of those who applied but were not admitted.