CAREER Reviewer Instructions

Note to Reviewers of CAREER Proposals Submitted for the FY'05 Competition

The Faculty Early Career Development (CAREER) Program is a Foundation-wide activity that offers the National Science Foundation’s most prestigious awards for new faculty. The program recognizes and supports the early career development activities of those faculty members who are most likely to become the academic leaders of the 21stcentury.

CAREER awards have a 5-year duration. In FY'05 , the minimum CAREER award (including indirect costs) is $400,000 for all NSF directorates with the exception of the Biological Sciences Directorate (BIO), where the minimum CAREER award is $500,000. Details about the CAREER Program can be found on the CAREER Home Page (http://www.nsf.gov/career). The CAREER program solicitation guidelines, NSF 02-111, can also be found at http://www.nsf.gov/pubsys/ods/getpub.cfm?nsf02111.

CAREER awardees will be selected on the basis of creative career-development plans that effectively integrate research and education within the context of the mission of their institutions. Such plans should build a firm foundation for a lifetime of integrated contributions to research and education. PIs are asked to include in their plans:

The objectives and significance of the proposed integrated research and education activities;
The relation of the research to the current state of knowledge in the field and of the education activities to the current state of knowledge on effective teaching and learning in one’s field of study;
An outline of the plan of work, describing the methods and procedures to be used, including evaluation of the education activities;
The relation of the plan to the PI’s career goals and job responsibilities and the goals of his/her institution; and
A summary of prior research and education accomplishments.

Education activities for the CAREER Program may be in a broad range of areas. They may address curriculum, pedagogy, outreach, or mentoring at any level, including graduate and undergraduate students, majors and non-majors, teacher preparation or enhancement, K-12 students, and/or the general public. Education activities may include designing new educational materials and practices, or adapting and implementing effective educational materials and practices developed elsewhere.

In your review of CAREER proposals, you should evaluate the scientific quality and importance of the proposed research and education activities, the objectives and significance of these activities, and the capability of the applicant to make an integrative contribution in both education and research. We also ask that you consider the Departmental Endorsement letter, found in the Supplementary Documentation section. This letter should contain an endorsement of the career development plan, a description of departmental support, and a verification of the PI’s eligibility for the CAREER program.

Your detailed comments on the quality of a CAREER proposal should be presented within the framework of the two Merit Review Criteria used to evaluate all NSF proposals, namely: (1) What is the intellectual merit of the proposed activity? and (2) What are the broader impacts of the proposed activity? These criteria are described in detail in Instructions for Proposal Review. Guidance on avoiding conflicts of interests and on protecting confidentiality is provided in these instructions. Separate text boxes are provided in the FastLane Review module for comments on each criterion, in addition to a box for Summary Comments. Please make sure you respond to both criteria.

Thank you very much for your help. Your reviews are important to NSF’s evaluation of proposals and provide important feedback to the Principal Investigators. We very much appreciate the time and thought that go into preparing reviews.