Frequently Asked Questions (FAQ) for Ethics Education in Science
and Engineering (EESE) (NSF 06-011)
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The following FAQs pertain to the program solicitations for Ethics
Education in Science and Engineering (EESE) NSF
07-541 and NSF
06-524 (archived)
COLLABORATION
ELIGIBILITY REQUIREMENTS
FINANCIAL/BUDGET/START DATE
PANEL PARTICIPATION
PROPOSAL PREPARATION
COLLABORATION
Question: What type(s) of inter-organizational collaborations
is NSF encouraging?
Answer: The EESE Program expects that proposers will put together
the best team possible to carry out the project. Simultaneously,
EESE encourages research-intensive and -extensive universities
to partner with other types of colleges and universities, especially
ones serving underrepresented minority populations.
Question: If multiple organizations are cooperating in the proposed
project, what are the mechanisms for submitting a proposal?
Answer: NSF has two mechanisms for submission of proposals from
multiple organizations: as a single proposal, in which a single
award is being requested (with subawards administered by the lead
organization); or by simultaneous submission of proposals from
different organizations, with each organization requesting a separate
award. In either case, the lead organization’s proposal must
contain all of the requisite sections as a single package to be
provided to reviewers (that will happen automatically when procedures
below are followed). All collaborative proposals must clearly describe
the roles to be played by the other organizations, specify the
managerial arrangements, and explain the advantages of the multi-organizational
effort within the project description.
These collaborative proposals are described more fully in Section
II.D.3 of the NSF Grant Proposal Guide (GPG) (http://www.nsf.gov/publications/pub_sum.jsp?ods_key=gpg).
The GPG also includes instructions for submission of these types
of proposals.
Question: One of the organizations involved in our project is
in an EPSCoR state. How do we get EPSCoR certification?
Answer: Certification is no longer required
as part of the EPSCoR co-funding process. Eligibility for co-funding
is automatic if a collaborative proposal involving an organization
located in an EPSCoR jurisdiction is submitted according to the
instructions provided in Section II.D.3.b of the NSF Grant Proposal
Guide (http://nsf.gov/pubsys/ods/getpub.cfm?gpg).
Question: My question is not in this list and is not answered
in the solicitation. What should I do?
Answer: Send e-mail to: eglinert@nsf.gov.
ELIGIBILITY REQUIREMENTS
Question: What organizations are eligible to apply?
Answer: Only accredited U.S. colleges or universities
or U.S. professional associations are eligible to apply to this
program. Other types of organizations can be included only as non-lead
collaborators or sub-awardees. In addition, U.S. colleges and universities
and U.S. professional associations can be non-lead collaborators
or sub-awardees. Professional associations include non-profit organizations
like science or engineering societies and educational consortia.
Trade associations and non-governmental organizations (NGOs) are
not professional associations, and are not eligible to apply. Trade
associations and NGOs may be involved as sub-awardees or in consultant
or advisory roles in proposals.
Question: Are government labs or for-profit organizations allowed
to submit EESE proposals?
Answer: Only accredited U.S. colleges or universities and U.S.
professional associations may submit proposals for this competition.
Question: The Engineering College in my university would like
to submit a separate proposal from one being developed in the College
of Arts and Sciences. Is this allowed?
Answer: No. This violates the restriction of one proposal per
organization. If we receive more than one proposal from an organization,
the organization will have a week from notification to select one
for consideration. If one is not selected in that time, all proposals
will be returned without review. An organization may be included
as a non-lead collaborator or sub-awardee on any number of proposals.
Question: Can organizations outside the U.S. apply?
Answer: The EESE Program encourages international collaborations.
The topic of ethics education in science and engineering crosses
national boundaries. Many international students come to do graduate
work in science and engineering in U.S. universities. The typical
expectation is that investigators on a project team will receive
funding from their own countries’ funding agencies. especially
if the international collaboration is with researchers in developed
countries (e.g., Europe, Britain, Japan) that have substantial
resources of their own. The eligibility rules for submission to
EESE do allow researchers outside of the U.S. to apply indirectly
- either as consultants on a lead proposal or as subawards. In
both cases, justification is required of the unique capabilities
offered or the specific research needs that will be accomplished.
No indirect costs are allowed for foreign organizations. In addition,
it is expected that the international budget will be small, relative
to the overall size of the project budget.
Question: Are graduate students or unaffiliated researchers eligible
to apply to EESE?
Answer: Graduate students and unaffiliated researchers may be
included on EESE proposals. Graduate students should not be included
as PI, co-PI, or senior personnel. Unaffiliated researchers need
to go through an eligible organization to be involved in the EESE
competition. (See the answers to the previous questions.)
Question: Will proposals addressing medical or biomedical ethics
be considered?
Answer: No, the EESE program will not consider proposals focused
on ethics for medical students or in medical education. EESE will
not consider proposals that will start or provide incremental improvements
to formal or informal educational activities responsive to Federal
mandates for research integrity or human-subjects training requirements.
Question: Is a program for graduate students of pharmacy (or
veterinary medicine) eligible for EESE support?
Answer: NSF does not support research in clinical aspects of
this field, so a project focused primarily on this audience would
be of lower priority for NSF support.
Question: Will proposals addressing ethics and the social and
behavioral sciences be considered?
Answer: Yes, the EESE program considers proposals focused on
ethics and the social and behavioral sciences. It considers proposals
focused on any of the areas in science or engineering that NSF
supports. This includes history and philosophy of science, science
and technology studies, and studies of ethics and science, engineering,
and technology as well as studies of policy, science, engineering
and technology.
Question: Will proposals addressing issues of ethics and international
science and engineering be considered?
Answer: Yes. The EESE program will consider proposals focused
on ethical issues in graduate education in science and engineering
in an international context. These involve ethical issues for international
students and faculty in U.S. graduate education, ethical issues
in graduate education for international careers, and issues of
ethics arising in the context of international practice.
Question: I have not incorporated a plan to test the educational
activities in my project at another institution. Will my proposal
be eligible for consideration?
Answer: Yes, it will be eligible. But panelists will be asked
to keep in mind the criterion of testing at another institution
in evaluating the submissions. They are likely to assign better
ratings to otherwise similar proposals with these plans.
Question: My ethics center has indicated an interest in working
with me on a seminar series as part of the project, but we have
not yet determined how many sessions would be useful or what the
subjects for the sessions would be. Can I submit with this left
undetermined?
Answer: Yes, you can submit. However, reviewers are likely to
assign better ratings to otherwise similar proposals with carefully
worked-out plans that specify project team members’ responsibilities,
what the educational activities will be, who will undertake them,
and how the results will be evaluated.
Question: My question is not in this list and is not answered
in the solicitation. What should I do?
Answer: Send e-mail to: eglinert@nsf.gov.
FINANCIAL/BUDGET/START DATE
Question: How will the EESE funds be divided across the NSF directorates
and different subject areas of the solicitation?
Answer: We do not make a priori funding decisions across the
subject areas. EESE is an interdisciplinary activity involving
many Directorates, and many awards receive funds from several Directorates.
Decisions about funding are made after the proposals are reviewed,
and after all Directorates have a chance to determine which proposals
are the most interesting and promising to them. If the proposals
in some particular area are of unusually high quality, that area
may attract more money than expected in advance.
Question: Is there a limit to the amount of funds I can request
for my proposal?
Answer: There is no official limit. The budget for this competition
is $1.55 million, and the program expects to make around 5 to 12
awards, with amounts not exceeding $300,000. Investigators should
be aware that if they submit proposals with requests that far exceed
that amount, reviewers and NSF program officials may question the
feasibility of their doing the project with less funding.
Question: Can funds be used for graduate stipends or tuition
waivers?
Answer: Yes, EESE proposals may request support in all the usual
NSF budget categories.
Question: When will the announcement of the grant awards be made,
and how soon afterward would you expect a program to begin?
Answer: We plan to communicate with successful applicants by
July and expect awards under this solicitation to be made by end
of summer. Grantees would have some flexibility in when they actually
start their grant-supported activities; you should request a starting
date that makes most sense to you. That is one item that can be
negotiated if necessary after the proposal has been reviewed.
Question: My question is not in this list and is not answered
in the solicitation. What should I do?
Answer: Send e-mail to:eglinert@nsf.gov.
PANEL PARTICIPATION
Question: Can I be a member of the panel that will review EESE
proposals this year?
Answer: If you are on an EESE proposal submitted this year, then
you cannot be a panelist this year. If you did not submit an EESE
proposal this year in response to the current solicitation, you
may volunteer to be a panelist. If you want to volunteer, notify
the Program Officer in the list of contacts who is closest to your
field of research. Include a URL for your biosketch and a brief
description of your research expertise in your e-mail. The program
officer will contact you if your area of expertise is relevant
and we need panelists in that area. If you don’t see anyone
in the list of contacts who you feel is appropriate, send the information
to eglinert@nsf.gov.
PROPOSAL PREPARATION
Question: What needs to be included in the Project Summary?
Answer: The NSF Grant Proposal Guide (GPG) (available at http://nsf.gov/publications/pub_summ.jsp?ods_key=gpg)
specifies that the Project Summary must clearly address, in separate
statements within the one-page limit, both the broader impacts
and the intellectual merit. Proposals that do not address both
merit-review criteria in separate statements in the project summary
will be returned without review. The GPG also states that the broader
impacts must be addressed in the Project Description and described
as an integral part of the narrative.
Question: Some of the work on our proposal is being done by a
graduate student who will not be a co-PI. How should that work
be reported?
Answer: The paragraph on "Participants" in the program
solicitation (Section II) says, "Graduate students should
be involved as project assistants as well as recipients of programs
or subjects of research." Therefore, whether or not the student
will participate if your project is funded, it may be advantageous
to include this student and her/his contribution to the proposal
in your description of the project team.
Question: Our project has an advisory board with members representing
three neighboring institutions. Would cross-listing the course
that we develop satisfy the requirement for testing in more than
one institution, or would we have to rotate it among the institutions?
Answer: The requirement for testing educational
activities in more than one institution is intended to ensure that
NSF-supported activities are exportable beyond the institutional
context in which they were developed. It also includes collecting
and analyzing data that will provide measures of success. If one
faculty member or a team developed the course and offered it at
one institution, and students at all three institutions could sign
up, that would not constitute a sufficient test, even if there
were evaluation plans. An appropriate test might offer it independently
at one or more of the other institutions, with previously uninvolved
faculty members and students. It would include assessment plans.
Merely rotating the course among the three institutions, with substantially
the same group of faculty members offering it and assessing results
at each institution, might not constitute a sufficiently independent
test of its feasibility and effectiveness beyond those institutions.
Question: Would testing a project activity at another college
in the same institution satisfy the statement in the solicitation
that project activities should be tested in more than one institution?
Answer: Testing the activities at several colleges
(or perhaps even departments) in one institution would be better
than doing it just at one, but all other things being equal the
proposal is unlikely to receive as high priority for support as
would one that satisfies the requirement for inter-institutional
testing.
Question: Can a project propose to create an ethics-training
program that leads to a graduate degree?
Answer: Yes, provided that there is a clearly stated plan to
test the program’s feasibility, or that of relevant program
components, at more than one institution.
Question: Can a project include developing a Web site (or augmenting
an existing one)?
Answer: Yes, provided that the work performed
is in line with the objectives set out in the announcement. Proposals
solely to develop or expand Web sites are unlikely to be competitive.
Competitive proposals would incorporate Web-site development (if
that is an aspect of their plans) with other outreach and dissemination
activities.
Question: Do citations and references count against
the Project Description page limit?
Answer: No. They should be included in the References
Cited section of the proposal.
Question: May I submit the same proposal to EESE and to another
NSF program?
Answer: No. A unique proposal can be submitted
only once to NSF. If the proposal is a duplicate of or substantially
similar to a proposal already under consideration by NSF, it will
be returned without review.
Question: Can I request an extension of time to submit a proposal?
Answer: No.
Question: What if FastLane or my university computer is unavailable
on the submission deadline?
Answer: Please avoid this problem by submitting
early. If you choose not to submit until the last minute, it is
at your own risk.
Question: What if there is an earthquake, fire
or other disaster?
Answer: Please contact us at eglinert@nsf.gov immediately.
We will make determinations on a case-by-case basis.
Question: What if listing my five most recent relevant papers
would take more than two pages because these papers have many authors?
Answer: The two-page limit dominates over the need to include
the entire list of authors for your relevant publications. If your
publications include large numbers of co-authors and you choose
to list all of the co-authors, you likely will be able to list
only a few papers. Instead, you may want to list only the first
few authors and add text reference to additional authors, such
as "Jane Doe, Soo Kim, and 26 other authors, including <Your
Name>."
Question: How do we submit supplementary documents?
Answer: Supplementary documents that are in accordance with the
solicitation should be scanned into the Special Information and
Supplementary Documentation section of the FastLane proposal.
Question: Why is the Directorate for Social, Behavioral and Economic
Sciences (SBE) the only one to appear as an option on the NSF
cover sheet in FastLane? I normally apply to Geosciences and
my proposal deals primarily with Geosciences.
Answer: The SBE Directorate is coordinating
the management of all proposals submitted to EESE. Program Officers
from all Directorates will participate in the management of EESE
proposals that fall into their areas of expertise. They will participate
in the panelist-selection and proposal-assignment processes.
Question: My question is not in this list and is not answered
in the solicitation. What should I do?
Answer: Send e-mail to:eglinert@nsf.gov.
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