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Research Grants

IERF’s mission is to research and share information on world educational systems and to facilitate the integration of individuals educated outside the United States into the U.S. educational environment and work force.

IERF accomplishes this by:

• conducting comprehensive, quality research on world educational systems
• sharing its research findings with the international community
• providing research-based credentials evaluations and related services

The purpose of the research grant program is to aid IERF in carrying out this mission. Therefore, IERF invites individuals and organizations to submit appropriate research project proposals for funding. Research grants are awarded for research only and not for study.

The Sepmeyer Research Grant Program

About inez sepmeyer.

For many years, the late Inez Sepmeyer worked at the University of California, Los Angeles (UCLA), where she focused on the admission and placement of international students and conducted research on international educational systems. Encouraged and aided by her late husband, Ludwig, she established the first U.S. private credentials evaluation service (IERF) in 1969. Her vision led to the publication of The Country Index, as well as other significant publications in the credentials evaluation field. Contributions include publications with the following organizations: NAFSA: Association of International Educators and American Association of Collegiate Registrars and Admissions Officers (AACRAO) – both of which have awarded her honorary and/or life memberships.

About the Grant Program

The research grant program is named in honor of Inez and Ludwig Sepmeyer because of their combined involvement in international education and their commitment to research and publications on world educational systems.

Examples of previous awards have supported research leading to the following: Conference Presentations

• Richard van Huyssteen. “South African Higher Education – Update.” 2002 American Association of Collegiate Registrars and Admissions Officers Conference in Minneapolis, MN.
• Mary DeBey. “Studying Education and Children: Teacher Education in Peru.” 2003 NAFSA – Association of International Educators Conference in Salt Lake City, UT.

Publications

• Karen Lukas.  The Educational System of the Federal Republic of Germany: A Guide for Evaluating Educational Credentials (2002). International Education Research Foundation: Culver City, CA.
• Country Profiles by Bon Agapin for  The New Country Index: Volume II  (2011). International Education Research Foundation: Culver City, CA.

About the Proposals

Grants up to $1000 will be awarded. Each research grant proposal is evaluated on how well its project design and expected outcomes address the following criteria:

• supporting research for the evaluation of foreign academic credentials
• promoting the integration of students, scholars and professionals holding non-U.S. academic credentials into the United States
• facilitating the publication and dissemination of the results of the research
• encouraging the exchange of information about the structure of educational systems and their corresponding credentials

Eligibility and Conditions

• The Sepmeyer Research Grant Program is open to all persons, regardless of citizenship and country of residence.
• The applicant must demonstrate substantial experience in the field of credentials evaluation, including experience as an evaluator, an admissions officer, or a counselor.
• The applicant must demonstrate expertise in the country they propose to research.

There is  no  application form. The applicant is required to submit the following:

• A detailed proposal containing the country to be researched, the sources that will be used, the time frame in which the profile will be completed, and a detailed account of the researcher’s experience and expertise in that country
• The curriculum vitae of the researcher

Applicants are also requested to indicate where they learned about the Sepmeyer Research Grant Program. All materials submitted in support of the Research Grant application become the property of IERF and are not returned to the applicant.

Applications are considered twice a year. They should be submitted by February 15th or August 15th and addressed to:

Susan Bedil Executive Director International Education Research Foundation, Inc. Post Office Box 3665 Culver City, CA 90231-3665 Phone: 310.258.9451 Fax: 310.342.7086 E-Mail:  [email protected]

2016-17 Sepmeyer Research Grant Recipients

IERF is pleased to announce Dr. Bernhard Streitwieser , Assistant Professor of International Education at The George Washington University, as a 2016-17 recipient of the Sepmeyer Research Grant.

The funding was awarded to support Dr. Streitwieser’s study on “German Higher Education and Credentialing Newly Arrived Immigrants.” The growing refugee situation in Europe has made Germany and the reaction of its citizenry and institutions, from the local government to the education sector, a focal point in the crisis. German universities have already taken in 50,000 refugee students in the Winter 2015 Semester, and more have since arrived. His study will focused on the challenges of the credentialing, placement and integration of Syrian refugees into Germany’s higher education system. To view the study, please click here . An article on his research can also be found in the 2016 summer edition of NAFSA’s IEM Spotlight newsletter.

IERF is also pleased to announce George Kacenga , Director of International Enrollment Management at University of Colorado Denver as a 2016-17 recipient of the Sepmeyer Research Grant.

The funding supported his research on the relationship between the increase in international student enrollment in the US and changes in the approaches to the analysis of foreign academic credentials over the past half century. George conducted this research as part of his doctoral dissertation as a graduate student at the University of Pittsburgh. To view the study, please click here . 

What our institutions are saying...

Annette ceccotti, assistant vice chancellor for admission, brandman university.

“IERF’s staff is extremely helpful, professional, and responsive.”

Anthony W. Adey, International Student Recruitment Officer, Memorial University of Newfoundland

“Our office staff are highly impressed with the publications in IERF’s Country Index Series.”

Jason Chambers, Assistant Director of International Transfer Admissions, University of Cincinnati

“The University of Cincinnati loves IERF evaluations. Keep up the great work!”

Sabrina Cortell, Director of Admissions, San Diego State University

“IERF’s evaluation reports are easy to review and accurate and the grading scale that IERF provides helps our international evaluators determine admission eligibility.”

James Crane, Assistant Dean of Graduate Studies, Brigham Young University

“IERF provides us with a sense of security and peace of mind in knowing that our applicants’ credentials have been accurately and securely reviewed.”

Jeannie D’Agostino, Assistant Director of Recruitment, Drexel University

“I found your presentation incredibly helpful and it’s prompted a discussion amongst our leadership team on how we review documents and how we might shift our policies moving forward”

Suguru Fujiwara, International Transfer Credit and Articulation Specialist, University of Idaho

“Your reports are detailed and always accurate.”

Andy Ray, International Student Recruitment Manager, University of Tennessee

“Thanks so much for the great presentation on fraudulent credentials.”

Patricia Ware, International Admissions, Brigham Young University

“Thank you for all you do! You are such a joy to work with and we appreciate your diligence and your concerns!”

Donald White: Education Abroad Advisor & Program Coordinator, Appalachian State University

“I just received the Index of Academic Calendars & Dates and I want to thank you and your team for putting together such an informative resource.”

Jean Yoo, Assistant Credentials Assessor, University of Toronto

“Thank you for your work; not only your books but also your conference presentations and articles available on your website are rich in information that are absolutely essential to credential evaluation. I look forward to learning more from your publications.”

Copyright © 2024 International Education Research Foundation, Inc.

Privacy Overview

Financing education

Education financing is a political and social decision-making process through which public revenues and other resources are collected and allocated to finance education and lifelong learning opportunities. It is concerned with translating public and governmental visions and goals for education and lifelong learning into financing sources, amounts and ways of financing schools and educational institutions. Financing entails governance and public sector systems, legal frameworks, policies, mechanisms and administrative structures. It also requires governments to regulate, distribute and allocate those resources, for example, directly to schools and educational institutions, sub-regional governments or authorities, levels and types of education. Moreover, the distribution of these resources to different geographical areas, specific populations or groups profoundly affects the equality of educational opportunities

Why is education financing important?

Education is delivered in both public and private institutions. However, public investment in education is important because:

• Education is a global common good; it has direct and indirect benefits for individuals, their families, economies, societies and the planet. Moreover, the benefits of lifelong learning are inter-generational – they reach the present generation without jeopardizing future generations.
• Education and learning are associated with other human rights and freedoms. From a human rights-based approach, States have the obligation and responsibility to guarantee the realization of the right to education. Free education reduces the cost of school and removes barriers to further education and a prosperous youth and adult life.

Securing these benefits requires commitment and long-term and predictable financing from governments to collect public revenues and mobilize and regulate funding to provide education. Unfortunately, many countries face financing gaps that can affect a whole generation of children, youth and adults.

What areas of education financing does UNESCO focus on?

The financing of education is generally challenging. In many countries, there is a need to increase spending, particularly to achieve national education goals while there is also a growing demand to use limited resources efficiently and in ways that contribute to improving equity.

The need for global action on financing was agreed upon at the highest political level in 2015 when the Education 2030 Agenda urged countries to adhere to international and regional benchmarks of at least 4 to 6% of gross domestic product and/or 15 to 20% of public expenditures allocated to education. Donors also agreed to dedicate 0.7% of their income to financially assist other countries. Other areas of policy discussion and action include changes in domestic taxation, innovative financing, the role of employers and philanthropy in supporting public education.

UNESCO's global action on education financing aims to strengthen the resilience, quality and equity of education systems and better deliver on the SDG 4/Education 2030 financing commitments. It does so by:

• Acting as a laboratory of ideas and developing research/knowledge pieces, guidelines and tools on financing education and lifelong learning, including early childhood care and education, adult education and learning, and digital learning.
• Fostering global policy dialogues, exchange of experiences and peer learning around education financing issues.

How does UNESCO engage with countries to undertake this work?

Countries have implemented alternative policies and reform pathways to improve their education systems and boost learning. However, results often fall short of expectations for many reasons; chief among them is the lack of appropriately planned funding to ensure full implementation.

UNESCO supports national and subnational education authorities in translating an education and lifelong learning vision into a reality. It offers technical assistance and capacity development on education financing issues, such as:

• Analyzing and reviewing education sector and sub-sector financing frameworks, policies and practices, including the coordination and integration of financing across sectors and sub-sectors.
• Monitoring and reviewing expenditures in education, including early childhood care and education, adult education/learning and digital learning.
• Coordinating and integrating the education budgets into sectoral and cross-sectorial financing frameworks.
• Elaborating resources projections, cost simulations and financing scenarios for developing self-sustaining national education sector plans and policies, including mobilizing alternative domestic and external resources.
• Evaluating the implementation of education financing policies.

What is an education simulation model and why use it?

Making an education vision a reality is a complicated process and requires substantial human and financial resources. What happens if we want to ensure free pre-school education for all? Or lower secondary education to become free and compulsory? Or raise teachers’ salaries to make teaching more attractive? These are just some of the questions to be answered when a country develops its education sector policies and plans. Without feasibility testing, countries face the risk of underfunding which leads to under or no implementation of policies and programmes. UNESCO provides direct technical support and capacity development to countries to undertake costing exercises and has also developed generic Excel-based simulation models (SimuED) that can be downloaded and used by country experts. 

UNESCO advocates for data-informed policy and decision-making in education. In educational planning, data can help ground policy and programme strategies and priorities in the economic and demographic realities of a country making them more likely to be realized. To help countries estimate the resources associated with implementation of their Education Policy and Strategy (ESP), in 2001 UNESCO developed the Education Policy and Strategy Simulation (EPSSim) model which has since been used in dozens of countries around the world.

To meet new education contexts and challenges and the targets of SDG4, in 2019 UNESCO launched the Simulation for Education (SimuED) model which is Excel-based and covers every sub-sector in education. Unlike other generic education simulation models, SimuED’s structure allows users to select the most relevant elements and projection techniques depending on their country needs and data availability. The process simplifies the model development process reducing the time needed to use it. SimuED also allows users to easily create and compare different scenarios to facilitate prioritization and decision-making.

To download SimuED, or access resources such as the samples and the video tutorials, please send an email to [email protected] .

Monitoring SDG 4: education finance

Resources from UNESCO’s Global Education Monitoring Report.

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Grants and Resources for Sustainability

Call for Proposals: Small Research Grants on Education

The Spencer Foundation is pleased to announce the Small Research Grants Program to support rigorous, intellectually ambitious and technically sound research that is relevant to the most pressing questions and compelling opportunities in education.

This program is “field-initiated” in that proposal submissions are not in response to a specific request for a particular research topic, discipline, design, method, or location.

Funding Information

• The Small Research Grants on Education Program supports education research projects that will contribute to the improvement of education, broadly conceived, with budgets up to $50,000 for projects ranging from one to five years. Eligible investigators may also request additional supplemental funds for a course release. They accept applications three times per year.

Eligibility Criteria

• Proposals to the Research Grants on Education program must be for academic research projects that aim to study education. Proposals for activities other than research are not eligible (e.g., program evaluations, professional development, curriculum development, scholarships, capital projects). Additionally, proposals for research studies focused on areas other than education, are not eligible.
• Principal Investigators (PIs) and Co-PIs applying for a Small Research Grant on Education must have an earned doctorate in an academic discipline or professional field, or appropriate experience in an education research-related profession. While graduate students may be part of the research team, they may not be named the PI or Co-PI on the proposal.
• The PI must be affiliated with a non-profit organization or public/governmental institution that is willing to serve as the administering organization if the grant is awarded. The Spencer Foundation does not award grants directly to individuals. Examples include non-profit or public colleges, universities, school districts, and research facilities, as well as other non-profit organizations with a 501(c)(3) determination from the IRS (or equivalent non-profit status if the organization is outside of the United States ).
• Proposals are accepted from the U.S. and internationally, however, all proposals must be submitted in English and budgets must be proposed in U.S. Dollars.
• Proposed budgets for this program are limited to $50,000 total and may not include indirect cost charges per Spencer’s policy. Eligible investigators may also request additional supplemental funds for a course release.
• Projects proposed may not be longer than 5 years in duration.
• PIs and Co-PIs may only hold one active research grant from the Spencer Foundation at a time. (This restriction does not apply to the administering organization; organizations may submit as many proposals as they like as long as they are for different projects and have different research teams.)
• PIs and Co-PIs may not submit more than one research proposal to the Spencer Foundation at a time. This restriction applies to the Small Grants Program, Large Grants Program, Racial Equity Research Grants Program, and Research-Practice Partnership Program. If the PI or any of the Co-PIs currently have a research proposal under consideration in any of these programs, they are required to wait until a final decision has been made on the pending proposal before they can submit a new proposal.

For more information, visit  Spencer Foundation .

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Racial Equity Research Grants

Application deadlines:.

Applications Open Now closed.

Program contact: Maricelle Garcia [email protected]

The Racial Equity Research Grants program supports education research projects that will contribute to understanding and ameliorating racial inequality in education. We are interested in funding studies that aim to understand and disrupt the reproduction and deepening of inequality in education, and which seek to (re)imagine and make new forms of equitable education. Thus, we are interested in research projects that seek to envision educational opportunities in a multiplicity of education systems, levels, settings, and developmental ranges and that reach beyond documenting conditions and paradigms that contribute to persistent racial inequalities.

Our goal for this program is to support rigorous, intellectually ambitious, and technically sound research that is relevant to the most pressing questions and compelling opportunities in relation to racial equity in education. In this cycle of funding, we will continue to fund scholarship focused on a range of communities and issues with respect to equity. We encourage proposals from across the methodological spectrum, including qualitative methods, mixed-methods, and quantitative methods. We want to especially encourage Racial Equity proposals that focus on the following areas: (1) innovative forms of measurement and assessment, (2) artificial intelligence (AI), and (3) current political challenges in k-12 and higher education around diversity, equity, and inclusion.

As with other Spencer grant programs, this program is “field-initiated” in that proposal submissions are not required to be developed around a particular research topic, discipline, design, method, or geographic location. We accept Intent to Apply forms once a year. We will be accepting applications for projects ranging from one to five years with budgets up to $75,000.

Program Statement

The Racial Equity Research Grants program supports education research projects that will contribute to understanding and disrupting racial inequality in education and work to reimagine generative possibilities to advance educational equity, with budgets up to $75,000 for projects ranging from one to five years.  While the field of education has long focused on issues of rising inequality across the globe, we now find ourselves in a time of increased urgency given the current intersections of the COVID19 public health crisis, rapid shifts in educational systems, economic challenges, and growing civil resistance to systemic racism, Indigenous erasure, and anti-Blackness. There is perhaps no issue of greater importance right now than racial inequality across all systems and structures. We believe that educational research can play an important role in developing new forms of education that are humane, equitable, and just. As such, there is a pressing need for robust approaches to scholarship that can contribute consequentially to achieving equity in education. We encourage a wide range of methodological approaches to creatively and ambitiously engage in advancing racial equity.

This program is “field-initiated” in that proposal submissions are not required to focus on a particular research topic, discipline, design, or method. We hope that scholars will identify the most compelling and needed areas of research. For instance, scholars might focus on: instructional challenges and innovations; racial and geographic disparities and promising directions for engaging and supporting children, families, and communities; informal learning environments and informal educators; assessment challenges and opportunities; climate change and equity, social-emotional learning and well-being; educator and leader development; digital learning environments; systems change and policy making; and intersections between housing, health, and education.

We are interested in proposals at all levels and in all settings of learning, including early childhood, higher education, and in schools, families, and communities across the world. We are also interested in studies that seek to understand the situated experiences of minoritized groups, including but not limited to, Black, Latine/x, AAPI, and Indigenous communities. In addition, we are interested in studies that focus on those learners who are multiply marginalized, including intersections with English language learners, immigrants, students with disabilities, highly mobile and institutionalized youth (e.g., foster youth or those in youth prisons), LGTBQIA+ youth, and those in rural communities. Finally, we encourage proposals that are reflective of other international, national, and local contexts. We recognize that the experiences of inequality, as well as the histories and structures producing it, will vary. Thus, we expect to fund proposals that explore meanings and possibilities of equity, as well as explanations of inequality, in a variety of ways. For example, engaging and understanding issues of coloniality may be central to scholarship focused on and with Indigenous communities. We see wrestling with these complexities as necessary to cultivating educational equity. Finally, we especially welcome proposals that advance strength-based perspectives and push beyond solely documenting current paradigms.

Our goal for this program is to support rigorous, intellectually ambitious, and technically sound research that is relevant to the most pressing questions and compelling opportunities in relation to racial equity in education. We seek to support scholarship that develops new foundational knowledge that may have a significant impact on practice and policy. We value work that fosters creative and open-minded scholarship, engages in deep inquiry, and examines robust questions related to education and inequality. We also value work that is engaging emerging possibilities. We invite proposals that aim to grow the current scope of research on racial equity, develop new knowledge through interdisciplinary scholarly engagement, and include collaboration in the service of increasing the impact of educational research.

To this end, this program supports proposals from multiple disciplinary and methodological perspectives, both domestically and internationally, and from scholars at various stages in their careers. We anticipate that proposals will span a wide range of topics and disciplines. We expect and welcome methodological diversity in answering pressing questions; thus, we are open to projects that utilize a wide array of research methods including quantitative, qualitative, mixed-methods, ethnographies, design-based research, participatory methods, and historical research, to name a few. We are also interested in methodological research that can enable and support research on and with racialized communities that build capacity for equitable educational systems. This could include exploration of methods appropriate in small samples and populations, the development of new measures and indices, and studies regarding the impact of methods and algorithms on reducing or promoting inequality. We are open to projects that might incorporate data from multiple and varied sources or work closely with practitioners or community members over the life of the project.   

We expect that projects will interrogate the systems and structures that are associated with racial inequities. We seek proposals that focus on a strengths-based, rather than a deficit oriented, approach.  A strengths-based perspective affirms and extends the knowledge, resources, goals, capacities, and interests of individuals, families, and communities, and identifies and builds upon existing assets and resources.

Eligibility and Restrictions

Eligibility.

Proposals to the Racial Equity Research Grants program must be for academic research projects that will contribute to understanding and ameliorating racial inequality in education, broadly conceived. Proposals for activities other than research are not eligible (e.g., program evaluations, professional development, curriculum development, scholarships, capital projects). Additionally, proposals for research studies focused on areas other than education are not eligible.

Principal Investigators (PIs) and Co-PIs applying for a Racial Equity Research Grant must have an earned doctorate in an academic discipline or professional field, or appropriate experience in an education research-related profession. While graduate students may be part of the research team, they may not be named the PI or Co-PI on the proposal.

The PI must be affiliated with a non-profit organization or public/governmental institution that is willing to serve as the administering organization if the grant is awarded. The Spencer Foundation does not award grants directly to individuals. Examples include non-profit or public colleges, universities, school districts, and research facilities, as well as other non-profit organizations with a 501(c)(3) determination from the IRS (or equivalent non-profit status if the organization is outside of the United States).

Proposals are accepted from the U.S. and internationally, however, all proposals must be submitted in English and budgets must be proposed in U.S. Dollars.

Restrictions

Proposed budgets for this program are limited to $75,000 total and may not include indirect cost charges per Spencer’s policy .

Projects proposed may not be longer than 5 years in duration.

PIs and Co-PIs may not submit more than one application for a given deadline in this program.  Additionally, PIs or Co-PIs cannot have two projects under review in different programs.

How to Apply

The application process begins with an Intent to Apply form.  Once submitted, you will automatically have access to the Full Proposal application in our online portal. Intent to Apply forms are due by 12:00pm Noon Central time, North America on the deadline date.

Intent to Apply Guidelines

The Intent to Apply form must be submitted through an online application form following the guidelines below before you are given access to the full proposal application.

Step 1 - Registration

Note: This application is configured for the Principal Investigator (PI) on the project to register and submit the form. If someone other than the PI will be completing the online application (e.g., an administrative assistant), the PI should register as described in Step 1 below, then provide the username and password to the person assisting them with the application.

If you (the PI) have never accessed the Spencer Foundation online portal, you must register and create a profile by going to https://spencer.smartsimple.us and clicking the “Register Here” button.  Follow the guidelines on the registration page to create your profile.

If you already have an account, log on to update your profile and access the Intent to Apply form.

Step 2 - My Profile

After logging in, follow the directions to complete the information requested on the My Profile page and upload your current CV (10 page limit). The My Profile page is your online account with the Spencer Foundation whether you are applying for a grant, reviewing a proposal, or submitting a grantee report.

Step 3 – Intent to Apply Form

To fill out the Intent to Apply form, go to your Workbench and click the Apply button for the Racial Equity Research Grants program.

Your draft form can be saved and returned to so that you may continue work on it at a later time if necessary. Your draft form will be available on your Draft Proposals list on your Workbench.  

Intent to Apply Form Elements

Within the online form, there are detailed guidelines for each section. Below is an overview of the application elements you’ll be expected to complete.

Project Personnel - As the person creating the draft application, you will automatically be assigned to the proposal as the Principal Investigator. If there are Co-PIs on the proposal, you are asked to provide their names and organizations in this section.

Proposal Summary – Information about the proposal is requested, such as the project title, estimated duration, the central research question(s), and a 200-word project summary.

Project Data – Within the online application, we ask you to check off the appropriate options with regard to your research study in the following categories: disciplinary perspective, methodologies, topics, geographical scope, contexts, and participants. This information is helpful in determining the appropriate reviewers for your eventual full proposal and for internal evaluations of our grant programs.

Once you have completed the form, click the Submit button at the bottom of the page. You’ll now have access to the Full Proposal application form on your Workbench.

Note: You must complete an Intent to Apply form by noon on the deadline if you intend to submit a Full Proposal for the upcoming review cycle.

Full Proposal Guidelines

Once your Intent to Apply form has been submitted, you will automatically have access to the Full Proposal application on your Workbench. Within the online application, there are detailed guidelines for each section. Below is an overview of the elements you’ll be expected to complete.

Project Personnel - As the person creating the draft application, you will automatically be assigned to the proposal as the Principal Investigator. If there are Co-PIs on the proposal, they can be added to the application in this section.  They must first follow Steps 1 and 2 above before being added to the application.

Proposal Summary – Information about the project is requested, such as the

project title, start and end dates, the central research question(s), and a 200-word project summary.

Budget and Budget Justification - The budget form is divided into the following categories and each category has a pulldown menu of the line item choices listed in parentheses below:

• Salaries (PI, Co-PI, Postdoctoral Research Assistant, Graduate Student Researcher, Undergraduate Researcher, Other Research Staff, Other Staff)
• Benefits (PI Benefits, Co-PI Benefits, Researcher Benefits, Other Staff Benefits, Tuition/Fees)
• Other Collaborator (Independent Consultant, Advisor)
• Travel (Project Travel, Conference or Dissemination Travel)
• Equipment and Software (Equipment, Software)
• Project Expenses (Supplies, Participant Stipends/Costs, Communication, Transcription)
• Other (This should only be used for expenses not covered in the choices above)
• Subcontracts (Information is pulled from the subcontract budget forms – see below)

Each expense for your project should be added and the budget narrative field should be completed, providing a description of that specific expense. Detailed guidelines are available within the application form.

Subcontracts: If your project has subcontracts, a separate subcontract budget form will need to be completed for each. The subcontract form has the same categories and line item choices listed above.

Proposal Narrative - You are expected to upload a proposal narrative pdf that includes the following:

A description of the project, the central research question(s), and the project’s significance.

A rationale for the project. This includes (a) summary of the relevant literature, the relationship of the proposed research to that literature, and the new knowledge or contribution to the improvement of education expected to result from the proposed research; and (b) a summary of the conceptual framework or theory guiding the project and how the project utilizes or builds on this framework of theory.

A description of the proposed research methods, description of participants, data collection instruments, and modes of analysis the project will employ. If applicable to the proposed methods, please include (a) information about the proposed sample/case definition and selection procedures; (b) research design, including when appropriate a description of the context of the study; (c) description of key constructs, measures and data sources; (d) procedures for data collection; and (e) procedures for data analysis.

This narrative may not exceed 2500 words and at the conclusion should include the word count in parentheses. Your reference list should follow your narrative in the same pdf file and will not count toward the 2500-word limit.

The text should be double–spaced and in 12-point font. APA style is preferred.  Please be sure to review your proposal for the deficit-oriented vs strengths-based orientation discussed above, especially your rationale for the study and study methods.

Note: Tables and other figures can be included in the text of your proposal, where appropriate, provided they are used sparingly. The text contained in any tables and figures will not count towards the word limit. However, it is important that you describe or explain any tables or figures in the narrative portion of your proposal, which will contribute to your word count. Do not assume that tables and other figures are self-explanatory.

Project Timeline -  A project timeline should be uploaded as a PDF file and should indicate the proposed start and end dates of the project as well as key project events and milestones. The major activities listed in the project timeline should be reflected in the proposal narrative. The project timeline may not exceed 1 page and the text should be in 12-point font. The proposed project duration can be up to 5 years.

Project Team -  A document describing the project team should be uploaded in pdf format and should identify the roles, responsibility and knowledge base of the PI, CoPI(s), and any supporting researcher(s). In the case where your project includes CoPIs and other supporting researchers, this document should articulate how the team will work together to complete the research project, highlighting what each team member will contribute to the project. Further, a short description of the relationship between the project team and the research site may be included, if appropriate. This document should not exceed 250 words and should be double–spaced in 12-point font. Note: this document will be reviewed along with the CV of the PI and any Co-PIs included on the application.

Optional Appendices A -  If you have additional documents focused on scientific instrumentation relevant to the study, for example interview protocols or survey instruments, they can be uploaded in this section of the application as supplemental information.

Optional Appendices B - If you have other supporting documents, such as letters of agreement or collaboration, they can be uploaded in this section of the application. Please see the guidelines in the online application for more information about these types of appendices.

Optional Appendices C - Innovative Approaches to Equity in Research: We recognize that scholars and scholarship have continued to develop innovative approaches to conducting research in ethical and just ways. Scholars have raised that proposals attending to these issues in sophisticated ways often face choices in providing detail in their proposals. Thus, if you so choose , you are invited to upload a one-page appendix in your grant proposal to elaborate on the theoretical, methodological, and partnership structures, or other dimensions you deem as relevant to conducting ethical and just research. For example, if your work engages youth, families, or community-based organizations, you may want to elaborate on how traditional power dynamics will be addressed. Or, if your work engages with Indigenous communities, you may want to elaborate on the project leadership’s histories and engagement with Indigenous communities, any formal agreements (e.g. Tribal IRB or approvals), or the use of Indigenous methodologies in the project.  Or, perhaps you are working on new quantitative measures or modeling approaches that would benefit from further explanation. We anticipate and welcome a wide range of other possibilities.

A note about IRB Approval: Proof of Institutional Review Board (IRB) approval is not required at the time of proposal submission.  In the event that IRB approval is needed for this project and it is chosen for funding, the Administering Organization will be responsible for obtaining IRB review and approval in accordance with its institutional policies and applicable law.

Resubmission -  If this is a resubmission of a proposal previously submitted to the Spencer Foundation, you are asked to indicate this within the application and upload a 1-page explanation of how the proposal was revised.

Project Data -  Within the online application, we ask you to choose the appropriate options with regard to your research project in the following categories: disciplinary perspective, methodologies, topics, geographical scope, contexts, and participants. This information is helpful in determining the appropriate reviewers for your proposal and for internal evaluations of our grant programs.

Signature from Authorized Representative of the Administering Organization – This section of the application details the steps necessary to obtain the authorized signature for your proposal through the Adobe E-sign process.  You are required to provide the Signatory’s name, title, and email address; this is normally an administrative or financial person who has the authority to sign the proposal on behalf of your organization. Note: The signature process must be completed by noon on the deadline date. You, as the applicant, are responsible for making sure your proposal is signed by the deadline.  Please account for the time it takes your organization’s authorized signer to review and sign proposal submissions.  We recommend filling in the online application at least a week ahead of the deadline date. The Spencer Foundation is unable to accept late submissions.

Once you’ve completed all of the elements listed above, click the Submit button at the bottom of the application page and it will be routed to your Signatory for signature and final submission.

Review Process

The Racial Equity Research Grants program uses a peer review process for all eligible submissions.  Each proposal will be reviewed by both external panel reviewers and internal staff. The review process for this program takes approximately 8 months from the full proposal deadline date.

The review panel for this program is made up of scholars in the field of education research with expertise across many disciplines and methodological areas.  Panelist are asked to rate and comment on the following aspects of your proposal:

Significance of the Project: Reviewers will evaluate the centrality of racial equity and education in the research, the importance of the topic to transforming inequality, and the quality of the research question(s) and/or direction of inquiry.

Connection to Research and Theory: Reviewers will evaluate the adequacy of the description of how other researchers have treated the same topic and how well the proposal responds to prior work and theory.

Research Design: Reviewers will evaluate the overall quality, sophistication, and appropriateness of the research design as well as its alignment with the research question(s) and/or conceptual framing.

Budget and Timeline: Reviewers will evaluate the adequacy of the budget and timeline.

Project Team: Reviewers will comment on the potential of the investigator(s) to complete the study as described and share the results or other findings.

Frequently Asked Questions

Q : Does this program support research in settings other than K-12 and higher education institutions? A : Yes, Spencer funds research projects that span the life-course (i.e., from early childhood to adult learning) as well as those that focus on contexts outside of school.

Q : Do you have a preference for certain research methodologies? A : No, we are open to whatever qualitative and quantitative methods make sense for answering the questions at hand. Historically, Spencer has supported research across a range of methods and academic disciplines, and we expect this to continue in this program.

Q : Do you have a preference for research teams vs. individual researchers? A : No, we do not have a preference. The important thing is to plan the staffing around the aims of the project.

Q : Can a graduate student serve as a Co-PI on a proposal submission? A : No, the PI and any Co-PIs named on the proposal are expected to have earned doctorate degrees prior to proposal submission.  While graduate students may be included in the budget as research assistants, this program is not meant to support student research projects.

Q : Do you accept proposals from outside the United States? A : Yes, we accept proposals from outside the U.S. Application materials must be submitted in English and project budgets must be in U.S. dollars.

Q : Do you have a preference for regional, national, or international projects? A : No, we do not have a preference.

Q : What is the expected duration of projects in this program? A : We leave the duration of the project up to the PI/research team to determine, but limit it to no more than 5 years.

Q: Can my organization submit more than one proposal at a time? A: Yes, as long as the proposals are for different projects and the research teams are different, it is fine for an organization to submit multiple applications at one time.

Q : If I am turned down, is it possible to revise my proposal and reapply in a later cycle? A : Spencer does not have a policy against accepting uninvited revised proposals. However, many factors go into the final decision on each proposal, including our limited budget.  Even if you receive feedback on your proposal and are able to address all of the reviewer concerns in the submission, we can offer no guarantees as to the likelihood of funding due to the fact that we currently fund less than 10% of the submissions we receive. Please note, resubmissions are considered among all of the other newly submitted proposals and are not given special status or consideration in the review process.

Q : I have an idea for a project and would like feedback. is it possible to contact someone? A : If you have reviewed our program statement and application guidelines and still have questions about whether your idea for a research project falls within this program, feel free to email us at [email protected] for guidance. While we are not able to provide feedback on proposal drafts, we are happy to answer questions by email.

Q: How do I determine my start date and when should I expect payment if my proposal is selected for funding? A: We recommend proposing a start date that is at least 7-8 months after the full proposal deadline. The review process for this program takes approximately 5-6 months, and once notified of the funding decision, it can take an additional 1-2 months for the official approval process, which entails reviewing the budget, processing award letters, and issuing the grant payment. NOTE: Grant payments are issued on the third week of each month. If Spencer has not received your signed award letters by your start date, your payment will not be issued.

Q : Are budgets expected to include in-kind giving or cost sharing? If not expected, is it allowed? A : In-kind giving or cost sharing is not expected or required as part of your proposal budget. However, if you plan to include in-kind giving or cost sharing as part of your project budget, you should indicate this in the online budget form in the narrative section. If your proposal is chosen for funding, the grant award may be contingent upon receiving documentation confirming the additional support.

Recent Awardees

A Longitudinal Analysis of Multiply-Marginalized Individuals’ Aspirations, Expectations, and Experiences After Navigating Food Insecurity at Selective, Normatively Affluent Universities Nathan Alleman, Kathryn Janda, Sarah Madsen Baylor University

Teaching the History of Enslavement and Race in the Colony-Metropole Nexus Marta Araujo, Francisco Osvaldino Nascimento Monteiro Centro de Estudos Sociais

Legal Status Invisibility and Racialized Hypervisibility: High School Counselors’ Experiences Advising Undocumented Students in Massachusetts Alessandra Bazo Vienrich Rhode Island College

Advancing QuantCrit Methods and Data Sensitivity Approaches in Special Education Research Nicholas Bell, Zachary Kendall Collier, Veronica Nelly Velez The Research Foundation for The State University of New York

The “I” in Africa: African-American Students’ Explorations of Black Identity Development through Critical Race Travel Pedagogy in Ghana Cathryn Devereaux Drew University

Protecting the Generations: Exploring Campus Safety in Tribal Colleges and Universities Jude Paul Dizon, Kēhaulani Vaughn California State University, Stanislaus

What's Race and Care Got to do With it? School Leadership Ethics for Communal Responsibility Osly Flores University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign

"We Need New Structures": Critical Mental Health Conversation Spaces for Girls and Gender Expansive Youth of Color to Envision Better Futures Jamelia Harris, Lauren C. Mims Justice and Joy National Collaborative

Automated Equity Reports for Supporting Equitable Learning Outcomes in Teamwork Pedagogies in STEM Trevion Henderson Tufts University

Legacies of Racialization and Sociopolitical Tensions: Sociolinguistic Consequences for Iranian Immigrant/Refugee Families with Children in K-12 Schools and Heritage Language Programs Marzieh Kaveh Arizona State University Foundation for A New American University

Teachers as Change Agents in Addressing Racial and Intersectional Microaggressions in School Settings Stephen Leff, Rui Fu, Nathalie H. Duroseau Children's Hospital of Philadelphia

Voices of Reason y Resistencia: Migrant Youth Enacting Participatory Action Joanna Maravilla Lewis University

Racial Equity for Education in Emergencies: Tracing Humanitarian Aid Policy-Making and Priorities Francine Menashy University of Toronto

The “Warmth” of Counterspaces: An Ethnography of a Black Doctoral Student Writing Group Michael Moses University of California, Riverside

Resisting Curriculum Erasure: Amplify Asian American Voices in Early Childhood Education through a Participatory Design of an Anti-Racist Biliteracy Curriculum Alisha Nguyen, Zhongfeng Tian Lesley University

Racial Literacy, Capabilities and Curriculum-making Edward Olivos University of Oregon

Exploring Institutional Agents’ Leadership Approaches and Racial Equity Orientations: Supporting Black and Latinx Students in Higher Education Oscar Patrón Indiana University Bloomington

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Education Spending

How is education financed how much do we spend on it what are the returns.

In most countries basic education is nowadays perceived not only as a right, but also as a duty – governments are typically expected to ensure access to basic education, while citizens are often required by law to attain education up to a certain basic level. 1

This was not always the case: the advancement of these ideas began in the mid-19th century, when most of today’s industrialized countries started expanding primary education, mainly through public finances and government intervention. Data from this early period shows that government funds to finance the expansion of education came from a number of different sources, but taxes at the local level played a crucial role. The historical role of local funding for public schools is important to help us understand changes – or persistence – in regional inequalities.

The second half of the 20th century marked the beginning of education expansion as a global phenomenon. Available data shows that by 1990 government spending on education as a share of national income in many developing countries was already close to the average observed in developed countries. 2

This global education expansion in the 20th century resulted in a historical reduction in education inequality across the globe: in the period 1960-2010 education inequality went down every year, for all age groups and in all world regions. Recent estimates of education inequality across age groups suggest that further reductions in schooling inequality are still to be expected within developing countries. 3

Recent cross-country data from UNESCO tells us that the world is expanding government funding for education today, and these additional public funds for education are not necessarily at the expense of other government sectors. Yet behind these broad global trends, there is substantial cross-country – and cross-regional – heterogeneity. In high-income countries, for instance, households shoulder a larger share of education expenditures at higher education levels than at lower levels – but in low-income countries, this is not the case.

Following the agreement of the Millennium Development Goals, the first decade of the 21st century saw an important increase in international financial flows under the umbrella of development assistance. Recent estimates show that development assistance for education has stopped growing since 2010, with notable aggregate reductions in flows going to primary education. These changes in the prioritization of development assistance for education across levels and regions can have potentially large distributional effects, particularly within low-income countries that depend substantially on this source of funding for basic education. 4

When analyzing correlates, determinants and consequences of education consumption, the macro data indicates that national expenditure on education does not explain well cross-country differences in learning outcomes. This suggests that for any given level of expenditure, the output achieved depends crucially on the mix of many inputs.

Available evidence specifically on the importance of school inputs to produce education, suggests that learning outcomes may be more sensitive to improvements in the quality of teachers, than to improvements in class sizes. Regarding household inputs, the recent experimental evidence suggests that interventions that increase the benefits of attending school (e.g. conditional cash transfers) are particularly likely to increase student time in school; and that those that incentivize academic effort (e.g. scholarships) are likely to improve learning outcomes.

Policy experiments have also shown that preschool investment in demand-side inputs leads to large positive impacts on education – and other important outcomes later in life. The environment that children are exposed to early in life, plays a crucial role in shaping their abilities, behavior, and talents.

Historical perspective on financing education

When did the provision of education first become a public policy priority.

Governments around the world are nowadays widely perceived to be responsible for ensuring the provision of accessible quality education. This is a recent social achievement. The advancement of the idea to provide education for more and more children only began in the mid-19th century, when most of today’s industrialized countries started expanding primary education.

The following visualization, plotting public expenditure on education as a share of Gross Domestic Product (GDP) for a number of early-industrialized countries, shows that this expansion took place mainly through public funding. Our topic page on global education provides details regarding how this expansion in funding materialized in better education outcomes for these countries.

How did the US finance the expansion of public education?

Public schools in the US educate more than 90% of all children enrolled in elementary and secondary schools. 5

This is the result of a process of education expansion that relied heavily on public funding, particularly from local governments. The visualization shows the sources of revenues for public schools in the US over the last 120 years.

As can be seen, states and localities are – and have always been – the main sources of funding for public primary education in the US. In fact, we observe three broad periods in this graph: there is first a period of stable revenues until 1920, then a period of sharp growth and decline during the interwar years, and then a period of substantial growth since the Second World War, slowing down in the 1970s. In all these periods, federal funding was always very small.

Disaggregated data from the last couple of decades gives further insights into the specific sources of local revenues for schools in the US: the largest part comes from property taxes (about 80% of local revenues came from property taxes in 2013), while only a very small part comes from fees and donations (private funding for public schools, which is considered a local revenue, amounted to less than 2% of total public school revenues in 2013). This heavily decentralized system relying on property taxes has the potential to create large inequalities in education since public schools in affluent urban areas are able to raise more funding from local revenues. Indeed, a significant part of the debate on education inequalities in the US today focuses on the importance of increasing progressive federal spending to reduce inequalities in public school funding. 6

How did France finance the expansion of public education?

The case of the US above shows that funding for public schools has been historically a responsibility of local governments. In other countries, such as France, the expansion of public education also took place initially with resources from local governments, but relatively quickly the fiscal burden was shifted to the national level. In France, this transition was associated with a sharp jump towards universal access and a concomitant reduction in regional inequalities.

The following visualization from Lindert (2004) 7 provides evidence of the French experience. As we can see there are three distinct periods: education spending was initially low and mainly private, then in 1833 funding began growing with local resources after the introduction of a law liberating communes to raise more local taxes for schools, and finally in 1881 the national government took over most of the financial responsibility after the introduction of a new law that abolished all fees and tuition charges in public elementary schools. In the source book, Lindert (2004) provides further evidence of how this transition towards centrally funded public education reduced north-south inequalities in France.

In the US growth in education expenditure was characterized by growth specifically in the public sector

A comparison of expenditure between public and private education institutions is helpful to contextualize the role the public sector played in the process of education expansion in industrialized countries. The following graph does this using data from the National Center for Education Statistics in the US.

It shows that during the years 1950-1970 – a period of substantial growth in education expenditure in the US – expenditure grew specifically in the public sector. 9

When did the expansion of basic education become a global phenomenon?

The second half of the 20th century marked the beginning of education expansion as a global phenomenon. The visualization shows government expenditure on education as a share of national income for a selection of low and middle-income countries, together with the corresponding average for high-income countries, for more than the last half-century. As can be seen, spending on education in many developing countries has become similar to the average observed in developed countries in recent decades.

It is important to point out that the remark above makes reference to convergence in expenditure relative to income . To the extent that low-income countries remain poorer than high-income countries, gaps in levels of expenditure per pupil are persistently large. Indeed, cross-country heterogeneity in education expenditure per pupil is currently much higher than heterogeneity in expenditure as a share of GDP. 10 One factor contributing to the slower convergence of expenditure per pupil in real terms is the fact that teachers' salaries – the main component of education expenditure, as discussed below – are much higher in high-income countries because labor has a higher opportunity cost in these countries. In general, the opportunity cost of labor is a key variable that governments in developing countries should factor in when deciding whether to expand education now, rather than later.

Education inequality is falling around the world

An important consequence of the global education expansion is a reduction in education inequality across the globe. The following visualization shows this through a series of graphs plotting changes in the Gini coefficient of the distribution of years of schooling across different world regions. The Gini coefficient is a measure of inequality and higher values indicate higher inequality – you can read about the definition and estimation of Gini coefficients in our related article . The time-series chart shows inequality by age group.

It can be seen that as inequality is falling over time, the level of inequality is higher for older generations than it is for younger generations. We can also see that in the reference period education inequality went down every year, for all age groups and in all world regions.

Have gains from historical education expansion fully materialized? The breakdown by age gives us a view into the future: as inequality is lower among today's younger generations, we can expect the decline of inequality to continue in the future. Thus, further reductions in education inequality are still to be expected within developing countries; and if the expansion of global education can be continued, we can speed up this important process of global convergence.

Education inequality can decline rapidly across all levels of education – South Korea is an example

The experience of South Korea shows that it is possible to reduce education inequality rapidly across all levels of education.

The following visualization shows two graphs comparing the concentration of years of education in South Korea between the years 1970 and 2010. To be precise, each of these graphs shows an education Lorenz curve: a plot showing the cumulative percentage of the schooling years across all levels of education on the vertical axis, and the cumulative percentage of the population on the horizontal axis.

As can be seen, in 2010 education was much less concentrated than in 1970, not only because there was a smaller share of individuals without schooling (shown at the bottom of the chart), but also because there was a smaller share of individuals concentrating large proportions of school-years at higher levels of education. Indeed, in only 40 years South Korea was able to double the mean years of schooling (from 6 to 12 years) and at the same time get remarkably close to the 45-degree line marking the hypothetical scenario of perfect equality of schooling.

Financing of education across the world

Is funding for education expanding.

The last two decades have not a clear trend in the share of income that countries devote to education.

The following chart plots trends in public expenditure on education as a share of GDP. We can see an upward trend in some countries, but a downward trend in others.

However, as incomes – measured by GDP per capita – are generally increasing around the world, this means that the total amount of global resources spent on education is increasing in absolute terms.

Is additional funding for education taking resources from other sectors?

The following visualization shows government expenditure on education as a share of total government expenditure. The available data also does not suggest a discernible global pattern here.

The data does suggest, however, that there is large and persistent cross-country heterogeneity in the relative importance of education vis-a-vis other sectors, even within developing countries.

European countries tend to assign a lower share of public budgets to education, relative to the amount of their income that is devoted to education

Generally speaking, countries that spend a large share of their income on education also tend to prioritize education highly within their budgets.

The following visualization presents a snapshot of government spending on education around the world. Specifically, this graph plots government expenditure on education as a share of GDP on the horizontal axis, and government expenditure on education as a share of total government expenditure on the vertical axis.

As we can see, there is a positive correlation, but regional differences are stark: for almost every level of spending as a share of GDP along the horizontal axis, countries in Europe spend a smaller budget share on education.

In European countries the weight of primary education within total education spending is lower than in other countries

In comparison to countries where education started expanding later, European countries tend to assign relatively more of their government education budgets to the secondary and tertiary levels, while at the same time devoting relatively less of their general government budgets to education as a whole.

This can be appreciated in the following visualization, where the prioritization of primary education (i.e. the share of primary education within the education budget) is plotted against the overall prioritization of education (i.e. the share of education within the entire government budget).

It can be seen that European countries are mostly located in the upper left. There is a weak positive correlation between the variables, both across all countries and across European countries.

In high-income countries, households shoulder a larger share of education expenditures at higher education levels than at lower levels – but in low-income countries, this is not the case

The following visualization shows the percentage of total education expenditures contributed directly by households in 15 high-income countries and 15 low or middle-income countries.

The top chart in this figure, corresponding to high-income countries, shows a very clear pattern: households contribute the largest share of expenses in tertiary education, and the smallest share in primary education. Roughly speaking, this pattern tends to be progressive, since students from wealthier households are more likely to attend tertiary education, and those individuals who attend tertiary education are likely to perceive large private benefits. 13

In contrast, the bottom chart shows a very different picture: in several low-income countries households contribute proportionally more to primary education than to higher levels. Such distribution of private household contributions to education is regressive.

Recent funding structures in OECD countries

Primary education continues to be publicly funded in industrialized countries.

We have already mentioned that those countries that pioneered the expansion of primary education in the 19th century – all of which are current OECD member states – relied heavily on public funding to do so. Today, public resources still dominate funding for the primary, secondary, and post-secondary non-tertiary education levels in these countries.

The visualization presents OECD-average expenditure on education institutions by source of funds. 14

Publicly funded pre-primary education is more strongly developed in the European countries of the OECD

High-income countries tend to have better-developed pre-primary education systems than lower-income countries. However, within high-income countries, there is substantial heterogeneity in the extent to which pre-primary education is publicly financed.

The visualization presents expenditure on pre-primary educational institutions as a share of GDP across the OECD.

As can be seen, publicly funded pre-primary education tends to be more strongly developed in Europe than in the non-European countries of the OECD.

Where does funding for education go to?

The largest part of funding devoted to education in OECD countries goes to finance current expenditures, mainly compensation of staff – specifically, teachers. The following two charts, taken from the OECD's report Education at a Glance (2015) , highlight the labor-intensive nature of education. In the lower levels of education (i.e. primary, secondary, and post-secondary non-tertiary) the share of current expenditure is very large and exhibits little cross-country variation – between 90 and 97 percent of total expenditure corresponds to current expenditure across all of the OECD countries. In higher levels of education (i.e. tertiary) there is more cross-country variation, but current expenditure still dominates by a large margin across all countries.

What drives current expenditure on education?

In the figures above we noted the importance of current expenditure in the production of education. The following table provides further details regarding the type of expenditures that comprise current spending. Specifically, this chart shows a breakdown of expenditure for tertiary-level institutions in the US (public and private), during the period 1980-1997. It shows that instruction accounts for almost half of expenditure; and while there are some small differences across sectors, there is a fair amount of stability in expenditures across time. This serves as a benchmark for lower education levels, where instruction takes an even larger share of expenditure. 15

International financing flows

Education financing in developing countries has been bolstered by development assistance.

Following the agreement of the Millennium Development Goals, the first decade of the 21st century saw an important increase in international financial flows under the umbrella of development assistance (often also called development aid, or simply 'aid').

The following chart shows total OECD development assistance flows for education by level, in constant 2013 US dollars, for the period 2002-2013. As it can be seen, there are two distinct periods: in 2003-2010 flows for education increased substantially, more than doubling in real terms across all levels of education; and in the years 2010-2013 funding for basic education decreased , while funding for secondary and post-secondary education remained relatively constant. For many low-income countries, where development assistance contributes a substantial share of funding for education, this marked change in trends is important. As a reference, in 2012 development assistance accounted for more than 20 percent of all domestic spending on basic education in recipient low-income countries. 17

The share of development assistance for education going to Sub-saharan Africa has decreased

The reductions in development assistance funds for primary education have been coupled with important changes in regional priorities. Specifically, the share of development assistance for primary education going to sub-Saharan Africa has been decreasing sharply since the agreement of the Millennium Development Goals.

The following chart shows this: sub-Saharan Africa’s share in total aid to primary education declined from 52 percent in 2002 to 30 percent in 2013, while the continent’s share in the total number of out-of-school children rose from 46 percent to 57 percent.

This pattern is something specific to the education sector within the broader development assistance landscape: in the healthcare sector, the overall slowdown of flows started a couple of years later, was less abrupt, and affected proportionally less the sub-Saharan countries. 18

Indeed, recent studies further highlight that development assistance for education is significantly different from assistance for healthcare in other ways: the education sector attracts less earmarked funding through multilaterals, and includes a smaller proportion of resources that developing governments can directly control for programming. 19

You can read more about development assistance for healthcare in our article on healthcare spending .

Development assistance priorities have the ability to increase or reduce expenditure inequalities

We mentioned above that public spending on education has translated, in the long run, into lower inequality in education outcomes across most of the world. But for any given country, with a given income distribution and demographic structure, the extent to which public spending on education contributes to reducing inequality depends crucially on the way in which spending is focused across education levels.

The recent UNICEF report The Investment Case for Education and Equity shows that in low-income countries, on average 46 percent of public resources are allocated to the 10 percent of students who are most educated – while this figure goes down to 26 and 13 percent in lower-middle and upper-middle income countries respectively.

The following visualization shows further details on the concentration of public spending across different countries. The vertical axis shows the percentage of public education resources going to the 10% most educated or 10% least educated students – as we can see expenditure is heavily concentrated at the top in many low-income countries.

The earlier remarks about trends in international education financing flows (namely that aid is very important in low-income countries, and that a relatively low and shrinking share of aid is going to primary levels), suggest that inequality in public spending may worsen in low-income countries. Yet development assistance priorities have the ability to change this. 20

What determines educational finance?

The big picture, why do governments finance education.

One of the reasons to justify government intervention in the market for education, is that education generates positive externalities. 21 This essentially means that investing in education yields both private and social returns. Private returns to education include higher wages and better employment prospects. Social returns include pro-social behavior (e.g. volunteering, political participation) and interpersonal trust .

The following chart uses OECD results from the Survey of Adult Skills to show how self-reported trust in others correlates with educational attainment. More precisely, this chart plots the percentage-point difference in the likelihood of reporting to trust others, by education level of respondents. Those individuals with upper secondary or post-secondary non-tertiary education are taken as the reference group, so the percentage point difference is expressed in relation to this group.

As we can see, in all countries those individuals with tertiary education were by far the group most likely to report trusting others. And in almost every country, those with post-secondary non-tertiary education were more likely to trust others than those with primary or lower secondary education. The OECD's report Education at a Glance (2015) provides similar descriptive evidence for other social outcomes.

The conclusion is that adults with higher qualifications are more likely to report desirable social outcomes, including good or excellent health, participation in volunteer activities, interpersonal trust, and political efficacy. These results hold after controlling for literacy, gender, age, and monthly earnings.

Do countries that spend more public resources on education tend to have better education outcomes?

Education outcomes are typically measured via 'quantity' output (e.g. years of schooling) and 'quality' output (e.g. learning outcomes, such as test scores from the Programme for International Student Assessment – PISA).

The following visualization presents three scatter plots using 2010 data to show the cross-country correlation between (i) education expenditure (as a share of GDP), (ii) mean years of schooling, and (iii) mean PISA test scores.

At a cross-sectional level, expenditure on education correlates positively with both quantity and quality measures; and not surprisingly, the quality and quantity measures also correlate positively with each other.

But obviously correlation does not imply causation: there are many factors that simultaneously affect education spending and outcomes. Indeed, these scatterplots show that despite the broad positive correlation, there is substantial dispersion away from the trend line – in other words, there is substantial variation in outcomes that does not seem to be captured by differences in expenditure.

Does cross-country variation in government education expenditure explain cross-country differences in education outcomes?

The following visualization presents the relationship between PISA reading outcomes and average education spending per student, splitting the sample of countries by income levels.

It shows that income is an important factor that affects both expenditure on education and education outcomes: we can see that above a certain national income level, the relationship between PISA scores and education expenditure per pupil becomes virtually nonexistent.

Several studies with more sophisticated econometric models corroborate the fact that expenditure on education does not explain well cross-country differences in learning outcomes. 25

School inputs

Each education system is different, but improving teacher quality is often more effective in improving learning outcomes than increasing the number of teachers per pupil.

A vast number of studies have tried to estimate the impact of classroom resources on learning outcomes.

The following table summarizes results from the systematic review in Hanushek (2006). 26 In this table, the left-hand side summarizes results from econometric studies focusing on developing countries, while the right-hand side presents evidence from the US (where studies have concentrated extensively).

We can see that for all listed inputs and across all countries, the share of studies that have found a positive effect is small – in fact, the majority of studies find either no effect or a negative effect. This clearly does not mean that these classroom resources are not important, but rather that it is very difficult to know with confidence when and where they are a binding constraint to improve learning outcomes.

A first conclusion, therefore, seems to be that context and input mix are fundamental to improving outcomes – even in developing countries where the expected returns to additional resources is large across the board.

Taking the ratio of positive to negative effects detected in the literature as a proxy for what tends to work best, we can derive a second conclusion from the table: spending more resources on better teachers (i.e. improving teacher experience and teacher education) tends to work better to improve learning outcomes than simply increasing the number of teachers per pupil. This seems to be true both in developed and developing countries.

This last conclusion is consistent with the main message from the OECD's report Does money buy strong performance in PISA? , which points out that countries that prioritized the quality of teachers over class sizes performed better in PISA tests. 27

This is is also consistent with a recent high-quality study on the impact of teacher quality on test scores using data from the US, which suggests that improvements in teacher quality can causally raise students’ test scores. 28

Remedial teaching can yield substantial improvements in learning outcomes

Education in low-income countries is particularly difficult because there is substantial heterogeneity in the degree of preparation that children have when they enter school – much more so than in high-income countries.

Evidence from policy 'experiments' in developing countries suggests remedial teaching, in the form of assistants teaching targeted lessons to the bottom of the class, can yield substantial improvements in learning outcomes.

The following visualization summarizes the effects of four different policy treatments within the so-called Teacher Community Assistant Initiative (TCAI) in Ghana – this is an initiative that evaluated four different such remedial teaching interventions. 30

The units in this figure are standard deviations of test results. The first two sets of estimates correspond to the test-score impacts of enabling community assistants to provide remedial instruction specifically to low-performing children, either during school or after school. The third set of estimates corresponds to test-score impacts of providing a community assistant and reducing class size, without targeting instruction to low-performing pupils. The last set of results corresponds to testing the effect of training teachers to provide small-group instruction targeted at pupils’ actual learning levels.

As we can see, while all interventions had a positive effect, the lowest impacts – across all tests – come from the non-targeted 'normal curriculum' intervention that reduced class sizes, and from the intervention that provided training to teachers on how to engage in targeted remedial teaching themselves. This suggests that the improvements in outcomes were caused by the combination of targeted instruction and TCAs who, unlike teachers, were specifically dedicated to this purpose. These results are consistent with findings from across Africa, suggesting that teaching at the right level causes better learning outcomes in a cost-effective way. 31

Are pay-for-performance teacher contracts an effective instrument to improve learning outcomes?

We have already made the point that the bulk of education expenditure goes specifically towards financing teachers. We have also pointed out that improving teacher quality may be a particularly good instrument to improve teaching outcomes. This leads to a natural question: are pay-for-performance teacher contracts an effective instrument to improve learning outcomes? A growing body of literature in the economics of education has started using randomized control trials (i.e. policy 'experiments') to answer this question. Glewwe and Muralidharan (2016) provide the following account of the available evidence:

"Results suggest that even modest changes to compensation structures to reward teachers on the basis of objective measures of performance (such as attendance or increases in student test scores) can generate substantial improvements in learning outcomes at a fraction of the cost of a "business as usual" expansion in education spending. However, not all performance pay programs are likely to be effective, so it is quite important to design the bonus formulae well and to make sure that these designs reflect insights from economic theory." 33

The conclusion is that well-designed pay-for-performance contracts are a cost-effective instrument to boost test scores; but this does not mean that they are necessarily effective at achieving other – perhaps equally important – objectives of time spent in school. In simple words, it is possible that pay-for-performance yields 'teaching to the test'.

Other incentive mechanisms, such as community-based monitoring of teachers, have been proposed as an alternative. Glewwe and Muralidharan (2016) also provide a review of the – somewhat limited – available evidence on such alternative incentive mechanisms. 34

Household inputs

School attendance and student effort are responsive to incentives.

Demand-side inputs are as important as supply-side inputs to produce education. Attending school and exerting effort are perhaps the most obvious examples: without these inputs, even the best-endowed schools will fail to deliver good outcomes.

The table summarizes information on different demand-side investments that have been shown to successfully improve quality and quantity outcomes. More precisely, this table gathers evidence from randomized control trials in developing countries, as per the review in Glewwe and Muralidharan (2016). The reported figures correspond to positive/negative significant/insignificant estimates across a set of available experimental studies (bear in mind some studies estimate more than one effect – e.g. by measuring outcomes at several points in time).

As we can see, the evidence suggests interventions that increase the benefits of attending school – such as conditional cash transfers – are likely to increase student time in school. And those that increase the benefits of higher effort and better academic performance – such as merit scholarships – are likely to improve learning outcomes. 35 .

Targeting health problems can be a particularly cost-effective way of increasing school attendance

In many low-income countries, health problems are an important factor preventing children from attending school.

The following visualization presents a comparison of the impact that a number of different health interventions have achieved in different countries – together with some non-health-related interventions that serve as references. The height of each bar in this graph reflects the additional school years achieved per hundred dollars spent on the corresponding intervention; so these estimates can be interpreted as a measure of how cost-effective the different interventions are. 37

We see that treating children for intestinal worms (labeled 'deworming' in the chart) led to an additional 13.9 years of education for every $100 spent in Kenya; while a program targeting anemia (labeled 'iron fortification') led to 2.7 additional years per $100 in India. These interventions seem to be much more cost-effective in improving test scores than conditional cash transfers, free school uniforms, or merit scholarships. 38

Of course, ranking these interventions is not trivial since most programs achieve multiple outcomes – indeed, we have already discussed that remedial teaching is generally effective to increase test-scores, although here we see a particular instance where it had no impact on school attendance.

Nevertheless, health interventions seem to be particularly interesting, since they lead to substantial achievements in both education and health outcomes. 39

How important are pre-school investments?

The environment that children are exposed to early in life plays a crucial role in shaping their abilities, behavior, and talents. To a great extent, this is what drives large and remarkably persistent gaps in education achievement between individuals in the same country, but in different socioeconomic environments. Cunha et al. (2006) provide a detailed account of the theory and evidence behind this claim and discuss its implications for the design of education policies.

In the chart, we see the impacts of the Perry Preschool Program – a flagship experimental intervention study, designed to test the impact of preschool education on subsequent education outcomes. 41

The chart shows disadvantaged children participating in the preschool program (the 'treatment group') had higher grades and were more likely to graduate from high school than the reference control group. Moreover, they spent substantially less time in special education. Other programs have similarly shown evidence of very large and persistent returns to early education interventions.

Interactive Charts on Education Spending

See the Wikipedia entry on compulsory education for a table of the ages of compulsory schooling around the world.

As per estimates from Adam Szirmai, (2015) The Dynamics of Socio-Economic Development .

As per estimates of Gini coefficients for the distribution of school years in Crespo Cuaresma, J., KC, S., & Sauer, P. (2013). Age-specific education inequality, education mobility and income growth (No. 6). WWWforEurope.

As per estimates reported in Steer L. and K. Smith (2015), Financing education: Opportunities for global action . Center for Universal Education.

As per 2015 enrolment estimates from the NCES.

An article from the Huffington Post highlights this point, including interesting visualizations documenting the important role that federal funding plays in reducing expenditure inequalities.

Lindert, Peter H. Growing public: Volume 1, the story: Social spending and economic growth since the eighteenth century . Vol. 1. Cambridge University Press, 2004.

Lindert, Peter H. Growing Public: Volume 1, the story: Social spending and economic growth since the eighteenth century . Vol. 1. Cambridge University Press, 2004.

Bear in mind that the estimates from the National Center for Education Statistics are not broken down by source of funds. Rather, they show expenditure by type of institution – which is not equivalent, since public institutions may spend private resources, and vice versa.

In 2010, high-income countries spent 6721 US PPP dollars per primary school pupil. Low-income countries, in contrast, spent 115 US PPP dollars per pupil (UNESCO EFA Global Monitoring Report 2014).

Jesus Crespo Cuaresma, Samir K.C., and Petra Sauer (2013) – Age-Specific Education Inequality, Education Mobility and Income Growth . WWWforEurope working paper; Working Paper no 6.

Data from Petra Sauer (2016) – The Role of Age and Gender in Education Expansion . Working Paper.

Strictly speaking, for this spending pattern to be truly progressive there must be subsidies or income-contingent loans to guarantee that low-income students can also access tertiary education and reap the private benefits from this type of investment.

The OECD provides country-specific figures. However, there is relatively little variation across OECD countries in this respect. This is explained by near-universal enrolment rates at these levels of education and the demographic structure of the population.

This is a stylized fact of OECD education spending. In all the OECD countries, the share of spending devoted to the compensation of teachers is by far the largest component of current expenditure. Moreover, expenditure on teachers' compensation is larger at the combined primary, secondary, and post-secondary non-tertiary levels of education than at the tertiary level. See Table B6.2 in Education at a Glance (2015) for details on the breakdown of current expenditure across all OECD countries by education level.

Welch, F., & Hanushek, E. A. (2006). Handbook of the Economics of Education, Two Volumes. North Holland.

Steer L. and K. Smith (2015), Financing education: Opportunities for global action . Center for Universal Education. Available Online from the Brookings Institution

The share of development assistance going to sub-Saharan Africa has decreased as a whole – from 55 percent in 2002 to 40 percent in 2013 –, but as we note the drop specifically for primary education has been steeper.

Steer L. and K. Smith (2015), Financing education: Opportunities for global action . Center for Universal Education.

The conclusion from these figures is that, while public spending does reduce education inequality in low-income countries, remaining inequalities could be further reduced by shifting resources towards lower levels of education. This evidently does not mean that resources should be shifted – low-income countries and aid donors may have other objectives apart from reducing inequality. But the case for reducing inequality at the bottom is very strong, and some studies suggest that returns to education at the primary level might be higher than at post-primary levels in low-income countries (for a discussion of the vast literature on returns to education, and the ongoing debate on the validity of estimates, see Heckman, J. J., Lochner, L. J., & Todd, P. E. (2006). Earnings functions, rates of return and treatment effects: The Mincer equation and beyond. Handbook of the Economics of Education, 1, 307-458. ).

That positive externalities justify government intervention in the provision of education is essentially an efficiency argument. The logic is that individuals may not spend enough on education because they fail to internalize the positive effect that their education has on other people. But there are, of course, also equity arguments to justify government intervention in the provision of education – for instance, reducing inequality in education may be of intrinsic value, or may be instrumental in reducing inequalities in other outcomes.

As per the source notes: "Percentage-point difference reflects the relative change of reporting to trust others compared to the reference category. For example, in Norway, the percentage of individuals with tertiary education reporting to trust others increases by 20 percentage points compared to someone who has upper secondary or post-secondary non-tertiary education. Similarly, after accounting for literacy proficiency, the percentage of individuals with tertiary education increases by 16 percentage points compared to someone who has upper secondary or post-secondary non-tertiary education."

Data on expenditure corresponds to 2010 total government education expenditure across all levels, as a share of GDP (source: World Bank Education Statistics). Data on PISA scores corresponds to 2010 mean average test scores across categories – mathematics, reading, and science (source: OECD PISA). Data on years of schooling corresponds to 2010 mean years of schooling for the population aged 15 and over (source: Barro Lee Education dataset)

Does money buy strong performance in PISA? - OECD. Available online here .

For a discussion of the evidence supporting this claim, see Hanushek, E. A., (2006). School Resources. Handbook of the Economics of Education, 2.

Hanushek, E. A., (2006). School Resources. Handbook of the Economics of Education, Volume 2. Elsevier.

This claim is clearly only descriptive since there are many underlying variables that simultaneously drive teacher characteristics and student outcomes in any particular country. Indeed, most of the available evidence on whether teacher quality and quantity matters is difficult to interpret causally, as it is hard to find instances where teacher quality/quantity varies exogenously. A recent study concludes on the topic: "teachers vary in many ways, but we found no high-quality studies that have examined the impact of teacher characteristics on student learning or time in school" (source: page 696, Glewwe, P. and Muralidharan, K. (2016) Improving Education Outcomes in Developing Countries: Evidence, Knowledge Gaps, and Policy Implications . Handbook of the Economics of Education, Volume 5. )

Chetty, Raj, John N. Friedman, and Jonah E. Rockoff. 2014. “Measuring the Impacts of Teachers I: Evaluating Bias in Teacher Value-Added Estimates.” American Economic Review, 104(9): 2593-26

Hanushek, E. A., (2006). School Resources. Handbook of the Economics of Education, 2.

Further details in Innovations for Poverty Action, 2014. I mplementation Lessons: The Teacher Community Assistant Initiative (TCAI) .

For further details, see: Glewwe, P. and Muralidharan, K. (2016) Improving Education Outcomes in Developing Countries: Evidence, Knowledge Gaps, and Policy Implications . Handbook of the Economics of Education, Volume 5. Elsevier. (Link to working paper)

Innovations for Poverty Action (2014). Implementation Lessons: The Teacher Community Assistant Initiative (TCAI) .

Glewwe, P. and Muralidharan, K. (2016) Improving Education Outcomes in Developing Countries: Evidence, Knowledge Gaps, and Policy Implications . Handbook of the Economics of Education, Volume 5. Elsevier.

They conclude that "evidence on the impact of monitoring on time in school is scarce and not encouraging...[while] the evidence of the impact of monitoring on student learning is only somewhat more encouraging"

See Glewwe and Muralidharan 2016 for further details on the underlying policy interventions, plus further evidence and discussion of results

Glewwe, P. and Muralidharan, K. (2016) Improving Education Outcomes in Developing Countries: Evidence, Knowledge Gaps, and Policy Implications . Handbook of the Economics of Education, Volume 5. Elsevier. (Link only to working paper)

Bear in mind that the reported gains in school years are a measure of the total impact of the program across the treated population, rather than impact per treated student. Further information on cost-effectiveness analysis is available from the source of the graph.

Further details on all interventions available in: Dhaliwal, I., Duflo, E., Glennerster, R., & Tulloch, C. (2013). Comparative cost-effectiveness analysis to inform policy in developing countries: a general framework with applications for education . Education Policy in Developing Countries, 285-338.

For an analysis of the literature on the impacts of mass deworming see: Croke, Kevin, Joan Hamory Hicks, Eric Hsu, Michel Kremer, and Edward Miguel. 2016. “ Does Mass Deworming Affect Child Nutrition? Meta-analysis, Cost-effectiveness, and Statistical Power .” Working Paper.

Dhaliwal, I., Duflo, E., Glennerster, R., & Tulloch, C. (2013). Comparative cost-effectiveness analysis to inform policy in developing countries: a general framework with applications for education . Education Policy in Developing Countries, 285-338.

More specifically, the Perry preschool 'experiment' consisted of enrolling 65 randomly selected black children in a pre-school program, and comparing their outcomes later in life against those achieved by a control group of roughly the same size. The treatment consisted of a daily 2.5-hour classroom session on weekday mornings and a weekly 90-minute home visit by the teacher on weekday afternoons to involve the mother in the child's educational process. More information and details on the intervention are available in Cunha et al. (2006).

Cunha, F., Heckman, J. J., Lochner, L., & Masterov, D. V. (2006). Interpreting the evidence on life cycle skill formation . Handbook of the Economics of Education, 1, 697-812.

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• No GST on R&D grants to educational institutes: Why this is a game-changing move for India’s higher education

No GST on R&D grants to educational institutes: Why this is a game-changing move for India’s higher education

A major fillip to innovation and research

Scope for resolution of past disputes and regularisation of demands, an encouraging m\move for public-private partnerships (ppps), strengthening india's global competitiveness, a step forward in the direction of ‘atmanirbhar bharat’, visual stories.

It’s new funding Friday! Check out some of the grants that recently came through our Office of Sponsored Programs AND   find your next funding opportunity .

$729,320 (continuing award, $3,348,469). J. Alan Boyette, Office of the Provost; Malcom Schug, Andrew Hamilton, Sat Gupta, Julia Smith. “ Louis Stokes New STEM Pathways Implementation-Only Alliance: Mountains to Sea North Carolina LSAMP. ” Sponsor: NSF.

$594,533 (continuing award, $2,811,316). Melody Patterson Zoch, Teacher Education and Higher Education; Jamie Schissel, Ye He. “ Project IGNITE: Innovation to Grow, Nurture, and Inspire Teachers of English-learners .” Sponsor: U. S. Department of Education.

$233,716 . Jennifer Coffman, Human Development and Family Studies. “ Understanding individual and contextual factors that support language learning and academic performance in bilingual classrooms .” Sponsor: Clark University.

$212,000 . Greg Bell, Graduate School. “ NSF Graduate Research Fellowship Program 24-29 .” Sponsor: NSF.

$6,421 (continuing award, $17,021). Noah Lenstra, Information, Library, and Research Sciences. “ Conference: Building Resilient Communities: A National Symposium that explores the role of public libraries in addressing local climate impacts .” Sponsor: Space Science Institute.

New Funding Opportunities 9/13/2024

Find your next funding opportunity here. Below is a September 13, 2024 roundup of recently announced funding opportunities curated by the Sponsored Programs, Research Development, and Research and Engagement offices. Coming soon: Recent funding opportunities will arrive directly in your inbox via our Funding Opportunities @UNCG weekly email.  Subscribe here .

9/27/24, Community-Engaged P2 Fellows , Office of Research and Engagement.

10/21/24, Internal Research Awards (FY25 Seed Funding) , Office of Research and Engagement.

9/20/24, Early Career Postdoctoral-Faculty Bridge Grant , American Chemical Society.

9/20/24, Principal Investigator Development in Sustainability Grant , American Chemical Society.

9/30/24, Simons Foundation: Solar Radiation Management , Simons Foundation.

10/7/24, Consortium for Neuroscience AD/ADRD in Low- and Middle-Income Countries , NIH.

11/1/24, Robert Wood Johnson Foundation – Evidence for Action: Innovative Research to Advance Racial Equity , Robert Wood Johnson Foundation.

11/7/24, Community Foods Project Competitive Grant Program , USDA National Institute of Food and Agriculture.

11/8/24, Specialty Crop Research Initiative , USDA National Institute of Food and Agriculture.

11/15/24, Pesticide Regulatory Education Program , Environmental Protection Agency.

11/15/24, Trailblazer Engineering Impact Award , NSF.

11/16/24, Basic Research in Cancer Health Disparities (R21 Clinical Trial Not Allowed) , HHS NIH.

11/19/24, Organs-on-a-Chip in Dental, Oral, and Craniofacial Research (DOC-OoCs) (R01 Clinical Trial Not Allowed) , HHS NIH.

11/31/24, Simons Collaborations in Mathematics and the Physical Sciences , Simons Foundation.

12/4/24, Biomedical Research Initiative for Next-Gen BioTechnologies: SynBio Control , NSF.

12/11/24, Humanities Research Centers on Artificial Intelligence , NEH.

1/8/25, Advancing Informal STEM Learning , NSF.

1/9/25, Digital Humanities Advancement Grants , NEH.

12/12/24, State-based Healthcare Extension Cooperatives to Accelerate Implementation of Actionable Knowledge into Practice (U19) , HHS Agency for Health Care Research and Quality.

1/16/25, Mechanisms that Impact Cancer Risk after Bariatric Surgery (R21) , HHS NIH.

1/31/25, Notice of Intent (NOI) to Issue Notice of Funding Opportunity (NOFO) Advanced Hydrogen and Fuel Cell Technologies to Drive National Decarbonization DE-FOA-0003439 , Department of Energy.

2/7/25, Quantum Leap Challenge Institutes , NSF.

2/13/25, Energy Storage Pilot Demonstrations , Department of Energy.

2/14/25, Small Research Grant Program for the Next Generation of Researchers in Low- and Middle-Income Countries (LMICs) for Aging and Alzheimers Disease (AD) and AD-Related Dementias (ADRD) Research (R03 Clinical Trial Not Allowed) , HHS NIH.

3/13/25, Clinical and Translational Science Award (UM1) , HHS NIH.

7/14/25, Exploratory Studies to Investigate Mechanisms of HIV infection, Replication, Latency, and/or Pathogenesis in the Context of Substance Use Disorders , NIH.

10/13/27, Administrative Supplements to Promote Diversity in Research and Development Small Businesses SBIR/STTR (Admin Supp Clinical Trial Not Allowed) , HHS NIH.

9/16/24 at 3:30-5:00 PM, Internal Research Awards Workshop (Option 1)

9/17/24 at 2:00-3:30 PM, Internal Research Awards Workshop (Option 2)

9/16/24 at 10:30 AM-12:00 PM, Internal Research Awards Workshop (Option 3)

Forecasted Opportunities

1/3/25, Protecting and Improving Health in Cote d’Ivoire: Building and Strengthening Public Health Impact, Systems, Capacity and Security , HHS CDC.

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About the photo: LSAMP leaders, staff, faculty, and undergraduate researchers across the alliance convened at the Mountains to Sea Alliance 2023 Annual Conference at UNC G. Photo by Sean Norona.

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IES grant will leverage UNC School of Education-developed learning analytics platform to enhance learning for 10K university students

Matt Bernacki, Ph.D., an associate professor at the UNC School of Education and the Kinnard White Faculty Scholar in Education, will serve as co-principal investigator of a new $1 million Institute of Education Sciences (IES) grant that aims to curb procrastination in American universities.  

The 2-year project – “A Multipronged Approach to Small-Teaching Interventions for Reducing Academic Procrastination: A Randomized Control Study via Terracotta” – will leverage CLICKSTREAM, a learning analytics platform developed by a Bernacki-led team that utilizes data students have consented to provide through their use of learning management systems (LMS). Aggregating LMS usage data and additional student data, CLICKSTREAM has the ability to immediately enhance the data students produce when they learn in digital spaces. The team adds key details about the kinds of resources the instructor provided and the kinds of strategies and techniques the resource might afford to learners who use it. Researchers use these enriched data to more accurately and descriptively understand how students learn.  

“Connecting students’ click data in an LMS with additional attributes students share about themselves also helps us understand how the same resource can benefit different learners in unique ways . For example, if the student is a first-generation college student or didn’t take similar courses in high school, the y may encounter challenges that more experienced students don’t. This gives us critical insight into individual students’ learning and brings powerful meaning to learning analytics,” Bernacki said.   

The project team – led by Akira Miyake, Ph.D., a psychology professor at the University of Colorado Boulder – will develop and test interventions for postsecondary academic procrastination, equipping students with strategies to circumvent two predicted causes of procrastination: (1) experiencing negative mood caused by aversion toward an academic task and (2) choosing an immediately pleasurable activity over the academic task. The interventions will be delivered through the Canvas LMS using Terracotta, a platform used to conduct educational research with randomized controlled trials.  

By pairing CLICKSTREAM with Terracotta, the research team can not only run experiments to determine which procrastination interventions benefit students, but also how those benefits are achieved, and how they vary from learner to learner.   

Over two years, the project team seeks to enroll 10,000 college students from across the U.S. who are enrolled in large lecture-based psychology and biology classes. Currently, data agreements are being finalized with institutions in Colorado, North Carolina, and additional states. Three of those schools are part of the UNC System.  

“Bringing CLICKSTREAM to life was and is a ton of work, and few, if any, have developed a data pipeline that can enrich data to reflect important details about the learner, the course context instructors build for their students, and the ways the learning opportunities instructors provide align with psychological theories of learning the way ours does,” Bernacki said.   

“Offering learning analytics services to other universities and intervention developers is a new venture for our team, but I am confident our platform can accurately describe participating students’ learning processes, tell a richer story about their learning, and provide researchers with better evidence about why their intervention works,” he continued, noting that this project marks the first time CLICKSTREAM (and the systems it replaces) has been used to support research outside of his team’s learning analytics research focused on student success in STEM and developing students’ learning skills.  

When asked about the future potential of CLICKSTREAM, Bernacki confirmed: “Beyond our work in higher education, our approach can deliver the same insight and impact in K-12 settings.  When we partner with educators who know their courses and their students and can enrich the story that students’ own data tell about their learning, CLICKSTREAM has the ability to meet education in the moment, at every level, and ensure every student’s learning is both seen and maximized.”  

In addition to Bernacki, Michael Kane, Ph.D., a psychology professor at UNC Greensboro, and Hannah Snyder, Ph.D., an assistant professor of psychology at Brandeis University, serve as co-PIs.  

CLICKSTREAM builds upon IES- and NSF-funded research conducted since 2014 by Bernacki and colleagues at UNC-Chapel Hill and the University of Nevada, Las Vegas. Recently, CLICKSTREAM has received critical seed funding from the UNC Office of Research and the UNC School of Education.  

September 10, 2024

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CALS Undergraduate Research Grants

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Kristina Harrison

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Agriculture and Life Sciences

CALS Undergraduate Research Grant

Funding up to $2000 USD is available to undergraduate students for research expenses, including travel to a professional meeting or conference to present findings. Funding may not be used as a stipend for students conducting the research. Students are advised to work with faculty members to develop scientifically relevant and well-circumscribed research proposals.

Decisions made by late-November for Fall funding and in early April for Spring/Summer funding.

The following is a list of undergraduate grants offered by the Office of Academic Programs:

• The Dextra Undergraduate Research Endowment Fund enables talented undergraduate students in genomics/life sciences and/or environmental sciences to perform undergraduate research. Undergraduate students in the College of Agriculture and Life Sciences are invited to submit proposals. Several grants of up to $2,000 will be made each year.
• The Cornell University Agricultural Experiment Station (Cornell AES) has made available $25,000 this year for supplementing current Hatch or Multistate projects where the principle investigator is mentoring a College of Agriculture and Life Sciences undergraduate student in research associated with that Hatch project. Twenty-five projects will be supplemented with $1,000 each to support the undergraduate student's research. The student should be engaged in independent research (i.e. involved in the research process more than doing "busy work" to earn an income).Projects awarded this supplement in Federal Year '22 (FY22) must be spent by September 30, 2024.
• The Cornell University Agricultural Experiment Station (Cornell AES) has made available $4,000 this year for supplementing current McIntire-Stennis grants, where the principal investigator is mentoring a College of Agriculture and Life Sciences undergraduate student in research associated with that McIntire-Stennis Grant.
• The Jane E. Brody Undergraduate Research Award funds undergraduate students in the College of Agriculture and Life Sciences Research Honors Program. Up to $500 of funds per student is available. Undergraduate students in the College of Agriculture and Life Sciences are invited to submit proposals.
• S. Ann and Robert R. Morley have provided funds to support research by undergraduate students in the College of Agriculture and Life Sciences. The primary objective is to increase the involvement of students in research in the agricultural and life sciences. Undergraduate students from the College of Agriculture and Life Sciences are invited to submit research proposals in competition for funding. Applicants may be individuals or groups; projects may involve basic or applied research. At least four proposals will be chosen for a maximum of $1,500 each. No student may receive the award for more than two consecutive years.
• Fredric (Fred) N. Gabler ’93 was a CALS alumnus who was killed in the September 11, 2001 tragedy. The Gabler Endowment was established by friends of Fred Gabler and his family to ensure the continuance of the honors research program in CALS. The fund will provide financial assistance to an undergraduate researcher enrolled in the CALS Research Honors program. 
• The Michael W. Berns BS ’64, MS ’66, PhD ’68 Undergraduate Research Award provides support to undergraduate students enrolled in the College of Agriculture and Life Sciences performing research in the life and environmental sciences. The fund will provide financial assistance to an undergraduate student working with a faculty member on a research project, which may take place during an academic semester or over a summer.

Grant Proposal Application Instructions

Proposals  must  strictly adhere to the guidelines described below; those that do not may be returned.

Proposals should include :

• Cover Page/Application Proposal  for Research funds. Students with Microsoft Word may fill out the application digitally. Eligible applicants may apply to more than one program using a single application.
• Statement of Objectives and Significance
• Brief Review of Relevant Literature
• Description of Methodology (detail adequate to evaluate the probability of project completion; statement(s) of expected results helpful if known)
• Time frame (research to be completed within a 12-month period)
• Literature Cited

Additional considerations:

• Proposals should be written in 12-point font with single or double spacing between lines and at least 1-inch margins. Abbreviations within the proposal must be defined. No appendices may be included.
• Undergraduate grant proposals are restricted to a  maximum of 2 pages , excluding cover page and list of literature cited.
• The budget should list the actual project cost; other sources of funding received, expected, or for which the student has applied; and the amount of funding requested from the Office of Academic Programs, including an explanation of how those funds will be used.
• If the student has already received funding for this research from one of these sources, an additional page must be added to the proposal describing the research progress.
• Computers and software purchased with these funds are the property of Cornell University and must remain at Cornell after the student graduates.
• All undergraduate proposals must be reviewed by the student’s research mentor and revised according to his/her recommendations. The final proposal must be signed by the research mentor before submission to the Office of Academic Programs.

A sample proposal is available for review:  sample #1 .

Funding is limited to  full-time students  only. 

These awards can be used for research or travel related to research, including attending research conferences.

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Active funding opportunity

Nsf 24-590: engineering research initiation (eri), program solicitation, document information, document history.

• Posted: July 11, 2024
• Replaces: NSF 22-595

Program Solicitation NSF 24-590

Full Proposal Deadline(s) (due by 5 p.m. submitting organization's local time):

     October 09, 2024

     September 16, 2025

Important Information And Revision Notes

• Eligibility requirements for the Principal Investigator (PI) have been modified to include an award cap of $200,000 or more within the past five (5) calendar years from the proposal submission deadline date. The Department Chair's letter must explicitly verify each of the PI eligibility criteria in their letter.
• Manufacturing Systems Integration (MSI) has been included as a participating program.
• The Additional Solicitation Specific Review Criteria has been consolidated into one criterion.
• A special topic focus opportunity in partnership with the Water Power Technologies Office (WPTO) of the Department of Energy's (DOE) Office of Energy Efficiency and Renewable Energy (EERE), previously announced via a Dear Colleague Letter ( NSF 23-119 ), is now included in this solicitation. See Section II Program Description for additional information.

Any proposal submitted in response to this solicitation should be submitted in accordance with the NSF Proposal & Award Policies & Procedures Guide (PAPPG) that is in effect for the relevant due date to which the proposal is being submitted. The NSF PAPPG is regularly revised and it is the responsibility of the proposer to ensure that the proposal meets the requirements specified in this solicitation and the applicable version of the PAPPG. Submitting a proposal prior to a specified deadline does not negate this requirement.

Summary Of Program Requirements

General information.

Program Title:

Engineering Research Initiation (ERI)

The NSF Directorate for Engineering (ENG) seeks to build engineering research capacity across the nation by investing in new academic investigators who have yet to receive sufficient research funding from Federal Agencies. The Engineering Research Initiation (ERI) program will support new investigators as they initiate their research programs and advance in their careers as researchers, educators, and innovators. This funding opportunity aims to broaden the base of investigators involved in engineering research and therefore is limited to investigators that are not affiliated with "very high research activity" R1 institutions (according to the Carnegie Classification https://carnegieclassifications.iu.edu/ ).

Broadening Participation In STEM:

NSF recognizes the unique lived experiences of individuals from communities that are underrepresented and/or under-served in science, technology, engineering, and mathematics (STEM) and the barriers to inclusion and access to STEM education and careers. NSF highly encourages the leadership, partnership, and contributions in all NSF opportunities of individuals who are members of such communities supported by NSF. This includes leading and designing STEM research and education proposals for funding; serving as peer reviewers, advisory committee members, and/or committee of visitor members; and serving as NSF leadership, program, and/or administrative staff. NSF also highly encourages demographically diverse institutions of higher education (IHEs) to lead, partner, and contribute to NSF opportunities on behalf of their research and education communities. NSF expects that all individuals, including those who are members of groups that are underrepresented and/or under-served in STEM, are treated equitably and inclusively in the Foundation's proposal and award process.

NSF encourages IHEs that enroll, educate, graduate, and employ individuals who are members of groups underrepresented and/or under-served in STEM education programs and careers to lead, partner, and contribute to NSF opportunities, including leading and designing STEM research and education proposals for funding. Such IHEs include, but may not be limited to, community colleges and two-year institutions, mission-based institutions such as Historically Black Colleges and Universities (HBCUs), Tribal Colleges and Universities (TCUs), women's colleges, and institutions that primarily serve persons with disabilities, as well as institutions defined by enrollment such as Predominantly Undergraduate Institutions (PUIs), Minority-Serving Institutions (MSIs), and Hispanic Serving Institutions (HSIs).

"Broadening participation in STEM" is the comprehensive phrase used by NSF to refer to the Foundation's goal of increasing the representation and diversity of individuals, organizations, and geographic regions that contribute to STEM teaching, research, and innovation. To broaden participation in STEM, it is necessary to address issues of equity, inclusion, and access in STEM education, training, and careers. Whereas all NSF programs might support broadening participation components, some programs primarily focus on supporting broadening participation research and projects. Examples can be found on the NSF Broadening Participation in STEM website.

Cognizant Program Officer(s):

Please note that the following information is current at the time of publishing. See program website for any updates to the points of contact.

• Rosa Lukaszew, telephone: (703) 292-8103, email: [email protected]
• Richard Nash, telephone: (703)292-5394, email: [email protected]
• Carole J. Read, telephone: (703) 292-2418, email: [email protected]
• Shahab Shojaei-Zadeh, telephone: (703) 292-8045, email: [email protected]
• Janis P. Terpenny, telephone: (703) 292-2487, email: [email protected]
• Satish Bukkapatnam, telephone: (703) 292-4813, email: [email protected]
• 47.041 --- Engineering

Award Information

Anticipated Type of Award: Standard Grant or Continuing Grant

Estimated Number of Awards: 55

The number of awards will depend on the availability of funds and the quality of the proposals. The awards will be two-years in duration.

Anticipated Funding Amount: $11,000,000

An ERI award, including indirect costs, must not exceed $200,000 for a duration of 24 months. The award funds may be used for research expenses, trainee support (e.g., students and/or postdocs), Principal Investigator (PI) salary and may include modest equipment cost necessary for the successful initiation and conduct of the proposed research. ERI awards are eligible for supplemental funding as described in the NSF Proposal & Award Policies & Procedures Guide (PAPPG).

Eligibility Information

Who May Submit Proposals:

Proposals may only be submitted by the following: In line with the program goals, ERI welcomes the submission of proposals to this funding opportunity from Institutions of Higher Education (IHEs) not currently classified as a Doctoral University with "Very High Research Activity" (R1 institutions) according to the 2021 Carnegie Classification: https://carnegieclassifications.iu.edu/ . These include two- and four-year IHEs (including community colleges) accredited in, and having a campus located in the US, acting on behalf of their faculty members. Eligibility is based on Classification on the date of proposal submission deadline. The participation of non-R1 institutions from the full spectrum of diverse talent in STEM are encouraged including historically under-represented or under-served populations, diverse institutions including Minority Serving Institutions (MSIs), Primarily Undergraduate Institutions (PUIs), and two-year colleges. Proposals from EPSCoR jurisdictions are especially encouraged.

Who May Serve as PI:

The PI of an ERI proposal must hold a doctoral degree in a field supported by NSF and must hold an appointment at an ERI-eligible institution. Postdoctoral fellow researchers are not eligible to serve as PI on an ERI proposal. At the time of the proposal submission deadline , the PI may not have been a PI or Co-PI on any current or prior awarded NSF research grant (including subaward) or have had research support from any other Federal Agency (within the United States or abroad) totaling $200,000 or more within the past five (5) calendar years from the proposal submission deadline date, with the following exceptions: Grants not directly for research purposes such as workshops, conferences, travel, instrumentation and equipment (e.g., Major Research Instrumentation; MRI), Research Experiences for Undergraduate Students (REU) and Research Experiences for Teachers (RET) Sites, etc.; Awards that exclusively support pre-tenure-track activities (postdoctoral fellowships and Graduate Research Fellowships/GRFP); I-Corps, Phase I Small Business Innovation Research (SBIR), or Small Business Technology Transfer (STTR) awards; and Awards that originated as NSF or other Federal funds but were distributed locally without naming the submitting ERI PI in the Federal funding proposal (such as: NASA Space Grant Project or other non-NSF federally-funded opportunities, NSF EPSCoR Research Infrastructure Improvement Program.). The Department Chair's/Dean's letter must explicitly verify each of the PI eligibility criteria. See Section V.A. for additional information.

Limit on Number of Proposals per Organization:

There are no restrictions or limits.

Limit on Number of Proposals per PI or co-PI: 1

An individual may serve as PI or Senior/Key Personnel on only one ERI proposal per deadline in response to this solicitation. Only one PI per proposal is allowed. Co-Principal Investigators (Co-PIs) are not allowed. Separately submitted collaborative proposals (see PAPPG II.E.3 for definition) are not allowed.

Proposal Preparation and Submission Instructions

A. proposal preparation instructions.

• Letters of Intent: Not required
• Preliminary Proposal Submission: Not required
• Full Proposals submitted via Research.gov: NSF Proposal and Award Policies and Procedures Guide (PAPPG) guidelines apply. The complete text of the PAPPG is available electronically on the NSF website at: https://www.nsf.gov/publications/pub_summ.jsp?ods_key=pappg .
• Full Proposals submitted via Grants.gov: NSF Grants.gov Application Guide: A Guide for the Preparation and Submission of NSF Applications via Grants.gov guidelines apply (Note: The NSF Grants.gov Application Guide is available on the Grants.gov website and on the NSF website at: https://www.nsf.gov/publications/pub_summ.jsp?ods_key=grantsgovguide ).

B. Budgetary Information

C. due dates, proposal review information criteria.

Merit Review Criteria:

National Science Board approved criteria. Additional merit review criteria apply. Please see the full text of this solicitation for further information.

Award Administration Information

Award Conditions:

Standard NSF award conditions apply.

Reporting Requirements:

Standard NSF reporting requirements apply.

I. Introduction

NSF investments in engineering research and education are critical building blocks for the nation's future economic growth and prosperity. Engineering breakthroughs have addressed national challenges, enriched our understanding of natural systems, fostered new technologies, fortified the nation's infrastructure, and introduced the exciting possibilities of engineering to the next generation. The Directorate for Engineering (ENG) supports the development of the full spectrum of diverse talent in the engineering workforce versed in the forefronts of engineering research and promotes the success of new academic investigators in their careers as researchers, educators, and innovators. The goal of the ERI program is to broaden the base of scientists and engineers in academia who dedicate their careers to advancing engineering research and education in societally important fields relevant to ENG.

II. PROGRAM DESCRIPTION

The ERI program is part of the capacity-building strategy of the Directorate for Engineering to direct its investments in engineering research across the nation. This solicitation provides support for investigators who have yet to receive sufficient research funding from Federal Agencies to initiate their engineering research programs and to be in a more competitive position for future proposal submissions.

ERI provides resources to enable impactful scientific work that will improve the research and scientific training environment at the institution through the conduct of fundamental research. Research activities may include efforts that catalyze new research partnerships, disseminate results, and/or lay a foundation to support preparation for future grant competitions.

NSF strongly encourages participation in this ERI program by PIs from the full spectrum of diverse talent in STEM. This includes PIs who are new investigators, from historically under-represented or under-served populations, and/or from institutions including Minority Serving Institutions (MSIs), Primarily Undergraduate Institutions (PUIs), and two-year colleges. Proposals from institutions in EPSCoR jurisdictions are especially encouraged.

Proposers may submit proposals only in engineering research areas supported by programs within the participating Divisions of the Directorate for Engineering. The list of ERI-eligible ENG programs is provided in Section V.A, Proposal Preparation and Submission Instructions.

Special Opportunities (Partnerships)

Partnership with the Department of Energy

The Water Power Technologies Office (WPTO) of the Department of Energy's (DOE) Office of Energy Efficiency and Renewable Energy (EERE) continues its special funding focus on new science and engineering proposals submitted to the Engineering Research Initiation (ERI) solicitation. The objective of the WPTO is to enable research, development, and testing of emerging technologies to advance marine energy as well as next-generation hydro-power and pumped storage systems for a flexible, reliable grid. To achieve these objectives, WPTO has long funded proposals on various aspects of marine energy and hydro-power systems. Priority topics for this special funding focus include:

• Marine Energy and Powering the Blue Economy: Marine energy has significant potential to power various markets and applications in the blue economy including micro-grids in remote coastal communities, ocean-based scientific and commercial missions limited by incumbent energy sources, and ocean and coastal-based applications like desalination and aquaculture where marine energy can improve the resilience and economic sustainability. Proposals in this research area may address technology challenges, engaging end users in industry and communities new use cases for marine energy integration, and socioeconomic aspects of marine energy development.
• Hydro-power and Climate Change Impacts: Hydro-power currently provides about 7% of U.S. electricity generation each year, but climate change is impacting its future. This includes impacts on balancing intermittent renewables on the grid, pumped storage hydro-power, providing black start capabilities after extreme events like hurricanes and fire, and serving as flood protection and water supply for irrigation, consumption, and recreation. Addressing these impacts involves climatology and hydrology, impacts on ecosystems, and risks and opportunities for hydro-power operation and planning at basin scales or larger. Proposals in this research area should seek to advance climate, hydrologic, water resource, or power systems monitoring or modeling as it relates to climate change impacts at watershed or energy-shed scales.

A proposer to the NSF ERI program solicitation does not need to take any additional steps to be considered for co-funding through this partnership. All ERI proposals in these topical areas will be considered for this funding, with the exception of proposals that have a DOE staff member as an unfunded partner. Such collaborations could be considered for funding with NSF funds, but not with WPTO funds. All proposals in these areas of mutual interest must be well-aligned with an NSF program that accepts ERI proposals. Proposals that are considered for co-funding by WPTO may be shared with WPTO staff to assess alignment with WPTO's research interests, and the unattributed reviews and panel summaries for those proposals may also be shared with WPTO. WPTO observers may also attend ERI panel discussions. Investigators who are interested in this opportunity may email [email protected] for additional information.

III. Award Information

Estimated program budget, number of awards and average award size/duration are subject to the availability of funds.

IV. Eligibility Information

The PI of an ERI proposal must hold a doctoral degree in a field supported by NSF and must hold an appointment at an ERI-eligible institution. Postdoctoral fellow researchers are not eligible to serve as PI on an ERI proposal. At the time of the proposal submission deadline, the PI may not have been a PI or Co-PI on any current or prior awarded NSF research grant (including subaward) or have had research support from any other Federal Agency (within the United States or abroad) totaling $200,000 or more within the past five (5) calendar years from the proposal submission deadline date, with the following exceptions: Grants not directly for research purposes such as workshops, conferences, travel, instrumentation and equipment (e.g., Major Research Instrumentation; MRI), Research Experiences for Undergraduate Students (REU) and Research Experiences for Teachers (RET) Sites, etc.; Awards that exclusively support pre-tenure-track activities (postdoctoral fellowships and Graduate Research Fellowships/GRFP); I-Corps, Phase I Small Business Innovation Research (SBIR), or Small Business Technology Transfer (STTR) awards; and Awards that originated as NSF or other Federal funds but were distributed locally without naming the submitting ERI PI in the Federal funding proposal (such as: NASA Space Grant Project or other non-NSF federally-funded opportunities, NSF EPSCoR Research Infrastructure Improvement Program.). The Department Chair's/Dean's letter must explicitly verify each of the PI eligibility criteria. See Section V.A. for additional information.

V. Proposal Preparation And Submission Instructions

Full Proposal Preparation Instructions : Proposers may opt to submit proposals in response to this Program Solicitation via Research.gov or Grants.gov.

• Full Proposals submitted via Research.gov: Proposals submitted in response to this program solicitation should be prepared and submitted in accordance with the general guidelines contained in the NSF Proposal and Award Policies and Procedures Guide (PAPPG). The complete text of the PAPPG is available electronically on the NSF website at: https://www.nsf.gov/publications/pub_summ.jsp?ods_key=pappg . Paper copies of the PAPPG may be obtained from the NSF Publications Clearinghouse, telephone (703) 292-8134 or by e-mail from [email protected] . The Prepare New Proposal setup will prompt you for the program solicitation number.
• Full proposals submitted via Grants.gov: Proposals submitted in response to this program solicitation via Grants.gov should be prepared and submitted in accordance with the NSF Grants.gov Application Guide: A Guide for the Preparation and Submission of NSF Applications via Grants.gov . The complete text of the NSF Grants.gov Application Guide is available on the Grants.gov website and on the NSF website at: ( https://www.nsf.gov/publications/pub_summ.jsp?ods_key=grantsgovguide ). To obtain copies of the Application Guide and Application Forms Package, click on the Apply tab on the Grants.gov site, then click on the Apply Step 1: Download a Grant Application Package and Application Instructions link and enter the funding opportunity number, (the program solicitation number without the NSF prefix) and press the Download Package button. Paper copies of the Grants.gov Application Guide also may be obtained from the NSF Publications Clearinghouse, telephone (703) 292-8134 or by e-mail from [email protected] .

See PAPPG Chapter II.D.2 for guidance on the required sections of a full research proposal submitted to NSF. Please note that the proposal preparation instructions provided in this program solicitation may deviate from the PAPPG instructions.

Proposal Contents

ENG Unit of Consideration: Research.gov users: Secondary units of consideration may be selected after the proposal is created by clicking on "Manage Where to Apply" in the proposal details section. Grants.gov users should refer to Section VI.1.2. of the NSF Grants.gov Application Guide for specific instructions on how to designate the NSF Unit of Consideration. For assistance in determining which program(s) to choose, refer to the list of ERI-eligible ENG Programs below:

• Electrochemical Systems
• Interfacial Engineering
• Process Systems, Reaction Engineering, and Molecular Thermodynamics
• Biophotonics
• Cellular and Biochemical Engineering
• Disability and Rehabilitation Engineering
• Engineering of Biomedical Systems
• Environmental Engineering
• Environmental Sustainability
• Nanoscale Interactions
• Combustion and Fire Systems
• Fluid Dynamics
• Particulate and Multiphase Processes
• Thermal Transport Processes
• Advanced Manufacturing (AM)
• Biomechanics and Mechanobiology (BMMB)
• Civil Infrastructure Systems (CIS)
• Dynamics, Control and Systems Diagnostics (DCSD)
• Engineering for Civil Infrastructure (ECI)
• Engineering Design and System Engineering (EDSE)
• Foundational Research in Robotics (Robotics)
• Humans, Disasters, and the Built Environment (HDBE)
• Manufacturing Systems Integration (MSI)
• Mechanics of Materials and Structures (MOMS)
• Mind, Machine and Motor Nexus (M3X)
• Operations Engineering (OE)
• Electronics, Photonics and Magnetic Devices (EPMD)
• Communications, Circuits, and Sensing-Systems (CCSS)
• Energy, Power, Control, and Networks (EPCN)

Project Title: The Project Title must begin with "ERI" followed by a colon, and then an informative title.

Co-PIs: Co-PIs are not permitted.

Project Description (10-page limit):

The Project Description should provide a well-argued and specific proposal for the activities that, over the course of a two-year period, will provide the foundation for a competitive, long-term, productive research program at the forefront of engineering research. PIs should pay careful attention to the Solicitation-specific Review Criteria listed in this solicitation and be sure to address these criteria in the Project Description. Reviewers will be asked to consider the potential of the research initiation activities to serve as the basis for sustained research contributions, consistent with the research goals of the PI.

It is recommended that the Project Description have the following section headers.

To satisfy PAPPG requirements, please note that if submitting via Research.gov, the section header for Broader Impacts must be on its own line with no other text on that line.

Research Goals: Provide a brief description of the PI's overall research goals.

Research Project: Provide a clear outline of the general plan of work including the research questions or hypotheses, the broad design of activities to be undertaken, and, where appropriate, a clear description of experimental methods and procedures. The proposal should include the motivation for the research and a discussion of the novelty of the work in the context of existing literature. The project description should also discuss mechanisms and plans for assessing success of the proposed activities. The proposed single-PI activities may include activities to catalyze partnerships. The potential partner(s) must be named as Senior/Key Personnel. Partnership activities may enable access to instrumentation or resources, activities that establish a working relationship such as formulating new and sound plans for larger-scale projects in emerging research areas, travel for the PI or trainees to strengthen the partnership, or other activities. Note that Subawards to R1 institutions are not permitted.

Proposals that include a request for equipment must follow the guidance in the PAPPG.

Broader Impacts: Provide a discussion of the broader impacts of the proposed activities.

The Broader Impacts may be accomplished through the research itself, through activities that are directly related to specific research projects, or through activities that are supported by, but are complementary to, the project. The project activities may be based on previously established and/or innovative methods and approaches, but in either case must be well justified.

ERI Criteria: Provide a brief description of how the proposed work addresses the solicitation-specific review criteria, as described in the "Additional Solicitation Specific Review Criteria" section below.

Supplementary Documents:

Supplementary documents are limited to the specific types of documents listed in the PAPPG, with the following exception: Department Chair/Dean's Letter (required).

Proposals must include a letter from an appropriate Department Chair or Dean describing how the proposed research plan is aligned with the department, school, or institution's goals. This letter should also describe how the PI's proposed ERI activities are aligned with the goals of the department or organization and how the department or organization is committed to the professional development of the PI. The letter must also certify that the PI meets the ERI eligibility criteria. If the PI has any non-institutional current or past support, the letter should succinctly indicate into which exempted category the support falls (see Eligibility Criteria.) Letters that do not meet these requirements will cause a proposal to be returned without review.

Cost Sharing:

Inclusion of voluntary committed cost sharing is prohibited.

Other Budgetary Limitations:

ERI proposals may include equipment costs necessary to conduct the proposed work. Proposers are encouraged to consider NSF's MRI solicitation for acquisition of a single well-integrated instrument with a cost of >$100,000.

D. Research.gov/Grants.gov Requirements

For Proposals Submitted Via Research.gov:

To prepare and submit a proposal via Research.gov, see detailed technical instructions available at: https://www.research.gov/research-portal/appmanager/base/desktop?_nfpb=true&_pageLabel=research_node_display&_nodePath=/researchGov/Service/Desktop/ProposalPreparationandSubmission.html . For Research.gov user support, call the Research.gov Help Desk at 1-800-381-1532 or e-mail [email protected] . The Research.gov Help Desk answers general technical questions related to the use of the Research.gov system. Specific questions related to this program solicitation should be referred to the NSF program staff contact(s) listed in Section VIII of this funding opportunity.

For Proposals Submitted Via Grants.gov:

Before using Grants.gov for the first time, each organization must register to create an institutional profile. Once registered, the applicant's organization can then apply for any federal grant on the Grants.gov website. Comprehensive information about using Grants.gov is available on the Grants.gov Applicant Resources webpage: https://www.grants.gov/applicants . In addition, the NSF Grants.gov Application Guide (see link in Section V.A) provides instructions regarding the technical preparation of proposals via Grants.gov. For Grants.gov user support, contact the Grants.gov Contact Center at 1-800-518-4726 or by email: [email protected] . The Grants.gov Contact Center answers general technical questions related to the use of Grants.gov. Specific questions related to this program solicitation should be referred to the NSF program staff contact(s) listed in Section VIII of this solicitation. Submitting the Proposal: Once all documents have been completed, the Authorized Organizational Representative (AOR) must submit the application to Grants.gov and verify the desired funding opportunity and agency to which the application is submitted. The AOR must then sign and submit the application to Grants.gov. The completed application will be transferred to Research.gov for further processing. The NSF Grants.gov Proposal Processing in Research.gov informational page provides submission guidance to applicants and links to helpful resources including the NSF Grants.gov Application Guide , Grants.gov Proposal Processing in Research.gov how-to guide , and Grants.gov Submitted Proposals Frequently Asked Questions . Grants.gov proposals must pass all NSF pre-check and post-check validations in order to be accepted by Research.gov at NSF. When submitting via Grants.gov, NSF strongly recommends applicants initiate proposal submission at least five business days in advance of a deadline to allow adequate time to address NSF compliance errors and resubmissions by 5:00 p.m. submitting organization's local time on the deadline. Please note that some errors cannot be corrected in Grants.gov. Once a proposal passes pre-checks but fails any post-check, an applicant can only correct and submit the in-progress proposal in Research.gov.

Proposers that submitted via Research.gov may use Research.gov to verify the status of their submission to NSF. For proposers that submitted via Grants.gov, until an application has been received and validated by NSF, the Authorized Organizational Representative may check the status of an application on Grants.gov. After proposers have received an e-mail notification from NSF, Research.gov should be used to check the status of an application.

VI. NSF Proposal Processing And Review Procedures

Proposals received by NSF are assigned to the appropriate NSF program for acknowledgement and, if they meet NSF requirements, for review. All proposals are carefully reviewed by a scientist, engineer, or educator serving as an NSF Program Officer, and usually by three to ten other persons outside NSF either as ad hoc reviewers, panelists, or both, who are experts in the particular fields represented by the proposal. These reviewers are selected by Program Officers charged with oversight of the review process. Proposers are invited to suggest names of persons they believe are especially well qualified to review the proposal and/or persons they would prefer not review the proposal. These suggestions may serve as one source in the reviewer selection process at the Program Officer's discretion. Submission of such names, however, is optional. Care is taken to ensure that reviewers have no conflicts of interest with the proposal. In addition, Program Officers may obtain comments from site visits before recommending final action on proposals. Senior NSF staff further review recommendations for awards. A flowchart that depicts the entire NSF proposal and award process (and associated timeline) is included in PAPPG Exhibit III-1.

A comprehensive description of the Foundation's merit review process is available on the NSF website at: https://www.nsf.gov/bfa/dias/policy/merit_review/ .

Proposers should also be aware of core strategies that are essential to the fulfillment of NSF's mission, as articulated in Leading the World in Discovery and Innovation, STEM Talent Development and the Delivery of Benefits from Research - NSF Strategic Plan for Fiscal Years (FY) 2022 - 2026 . These strategies are integrated in the program planning and implementation process, of which proposal review is one part. NSF's mission is particularly well-implemented through the integration of research and education and broadening participation in NSF programs, projects, and activities.

One of the strategic objectives in support of NSF's mission is to foster integration of research and education through the programs, projects, and activities it supports at academic and research institutions. These institutions must recruit, train, and prepare a diverse STEM workforce to advance the frontiers of science and participate in the U.S. technology-based economy. NSF's contribution to the national innovation ecosystem is to provide cutting-edge research under the guidance of the Nation's most creative scientists and engineers. NSF also supports development of a strong science, technology, engineering, and mathematics (STEM) workforce by investing in building the knowledge that informs improvements in STEM teaching and learning.

NSF's mission calls for the broadening of opportunities and expanding participation of groups, institutions, and geographic regions that are underrepresented in STEM disciplines, which is essential to the health and vitality of science and engineering. NSF is committed to this principle of diversity and deems it central to the programs, projects, and activities it considers and supports.

A. Merit Review Principles and Criteria

The National Science Foundation strives to invest in a robust and diverse portfolio of projects that creates new knowledge and enables breakthroughs in understanding across all areas of science and engineering research and education. To identify which projects to support, NSF relies on a merit review process that incorporates consideration of both the technical aspects of a proposed project and its potential to contribute more broadly to advancing NSF's mission "to promote the progress of science; to advance the national health, prosperity, and welfare; to secure the national defense; and for other purposes." NSF makes every effort to conduct a fair, competitive, transparent merit review process for the selection of projects.

1. Merit Review Principles

These principles are to be given due diligence by PIs and organizations when preparing proposals and managing projects, by reviewers when reading and evaluating proposals, and by NSF program staff when determining whether or not to recommend proposals for funding and while overseeing awards. Given that NSF is the primary federal agency charged with nurturing and supporting excellence in basic research and education, the following three principles apply:

• All NSF projects should be of the highest quality and have the potential to advance, if not transform, the frontiers of knowledge.
• NSF projects, in the aggregate, should contribute more broadly to achieving societal goals. These "Broader Impacts" may be accomplished through the research itself, through activities that are directly related to specific research projects, or through activities that are supported by, but are complementary to, the project. The project activities may be based on previously established and/or innovative methods and approaches, but in either case must be well justified.
• Meaningful assessment and evaluation of NSF funded projects should be based on appropriate metrics, keeping in mind the likely correlation between the effect of broader impacts and the resources provided to implement projects. If the size of the activity is limited, evaluation of that activity in isolation is not likely to be meaningful. Thus, assessing the effectiveness of these activities may best be done at a higher, more aggregated, level than the individual project.

With respect to the third principle, even if assessment of Broader Impacts outcomes for particular projects is done at an aggregated level, PIs are expected to be accountable for carrying out the activities described in the funded project. Thus, individual projects should include clearly stated goals, specific descriptions of the activities that the PI intends to do, and a plan in place to document the outputs of those activities.

These three merit review principles provide the basis for the merit review criteria, as well as a context within which the users of the criteria can better understand their intent.

2. Merit Review Criteria

All NSF proposals are evaluated through use of the two National Science Board approved merit review criteria. In some instances, however, NSF will employ additional criteria as required to highlight the specific objectives of certain programs and activities.

The two merit review criteria are listed below. Both criteria are to be given full consideration during the review and decision-making processes; each criterion is necessary but neither, by itself, is sufficient. Therefore, proposers must fully address both criteria. (PAPPG Chapter II.D.2.d(i). contains additional information for use by proposers in development of the Project Description section of the proposal). Reviewers are strongly encouraged to review the criteria, including PAPPG Chapter II.D.2.d(i), prior to the review of a proposal.

When evaluating NSF proposals, reviewers will be asked to consider what the proposers want to do, why they want to do it, how they plan to do it, how they will know if they succeed, and what benefits could accrue if the project is successful. These issues apply both to the technical aspects of the proposal and the way in which the project may make broader contributions. To that end, reviewers will be asked to evaluate all proposals against two criteria:

• Intellectual Merit: The Intellectual Merit criterion encompasses the potential to advance knowledge; and
• Broader Impacts: The Broader Impacts criterion encompasses the potential to benefit society and contribute to the achievement of specific, desired societal outcomes.

The following elements should be considered in the review for both criteria:

• Advance knowledge and understanding within its own field or across different fields (Intellectual Merit); and
• Benefit society or advance desired societal outcomes (Broader Impacts)?
• To what extent do the proposed activities suggest and explore creative, original, or potentially transformative concepts?
• Is the plan for carrying out the proposed activities well-reasoned, well-organized, and based on a sound rationale? Does the plan incorporate a mechanism to assess success?
• How well qualified is the individual, team, or organization to conduct the proposed activities?
• Are there adequate resources available to the PI (either at the home organization or through collaborations) to carry out the proposed activities?

Broader impacts may be accomplished through the research itself, through the activities that are directly related to specific research projects, or through activities that are supported by, but are complementary to, the project. NSF values the advancement of scientific knowledge and activities that contribute to achievement of societally relevant outcomes. Such outcomes include, but are not limited to: full participation of women, persons with disabilities, and other underrepresented groups in science, technology, engineering, and mathematics (STEM); improved STEM education and educator development at any level; increased public scientific literacy and public engagement with science and technology; improved well-being of individuals in society; development of a diverse, globally competitive STEM workforce; increased partnerships between academia, industry, and others; improved national security; increased economic competitiveness of the United States; and enhanced infrastructure for research and education.

Proposers are reminded that reviewers will also be asked to review the Data Management and Sharing Plan and the Mentoring Plan, as appropriate.

Additional Solicitation Specific Review Criteria

To what extent will the proposed research initiation activities serve as the basis for sustained research contributions, consistent with the research goals of the PI?

B. Review and Selection Process

Proposals submitted in response to this program solicitation will be reviewed by Ad hoc Review and/or Panel Review.

Reviewers will be asked to evaluate proposals using two National Science Board approved merit review criteria and, if applicable, additional program specific criteria. A summary rating and accompanying narrative will generally be completed and submitted by each reviewer and/or panel. The Program Officer assigned to manage the proposal's review will consider the advice of reviewers and will formulate a recommendation.

After scientific, technical and programmatic review and consideration of appropriate factors, the NSF Program Officer recommends to the cognizant Division Director whether the proposal should be declined or recommended for award. NSF strives to be able to tell proposers whether their proposals have been declined or recommended for funding within six months. Large or particularly complex proposals or proposals from new recipients may require additional review and processing time. The time interval begins on the deadline or target date, or receipt date, whichever is later. The interval ends when the Division Director acts upon the Program Officer's recommendation.

After programmatic approval has been obtained, the proposals recommended for funding will be forwarded to the Division of Grants and Agreements or the Division of Acquisition and Cooperative Support for review of business, financial, and policy implications. After an administrative review has occurred, Grants and Agreements Officers perform the processing and issuance of a grant or other agreement. Proposers are cautioned that only a Grants and Agreements Officer may make commitments, obligations or awards on behalf of NSF or authorize the expenditure of funds. No commitment on the part of NSF should be inferred from technical or budgetary discussions with a NSF Program Officer. A Principal Investigator or organization that makes financial or personnel commitments in the absence of a grant or cooperative agreement signed by the NSF Grants and Agreements Officer does so at their own risk.

Once an award or declination decision has been made, Principal Investigators are provided feedback about their proposals. In all cases, reviews are treated as confidential documents. Verbatim copies of reviews, excluding the names of the reviewers or any reviewer-identifying information, are sent to the Principal Investigator/Project Director by the Program Officer. In addition, the proposer will receive an explanation of the decision to award or decline funding.

VII. Award Administration Information

A. notification of the award.

Notification of the award is made to the submitting organization by an NSF Grants and Agreements Officer. Organizations whose proposals are declined will be advised as promptly as possible by the cognizant NSF Program administering the program. Verbatim copies of reviews, not including the identity of the reviewer, will be provided automatically to the Principal Investigator. (See Section VI.B. for additional information on the review process.)

B. Award Conditions

An NSF award consists of: (1) the award notice, which includes any special provisions applicable to the award and any numbered amendments thereto; (2) the budget, which indicates the amounts, by categories of expense, on which NSF has based its support (or otherwise communicates any specific approvals or disapprovals of proposed expenditures); (3) the proposal referenced in the award notice; (4) the applicable award conditions, such as Grant General Conditions (GC-1)*; or Research Terms and Conditions* and (5) any announcement or other NSF issuance that may be incorporated by reference in the award notice. Cooperative agreements also are administered in accordance with NSF Cooperative Agreement Financial and Administrative Terms and Conditions (CA-FATC) and the applicable Programmatic Terms and Conditions. NSF awards are electronically signed by an NSF Grants and Agreements Officer and transmitted electronically to the organization via e-mail.

*These documents may be accessed electronically on NSF's Website at https://www.nsf.gov/awards/managing/award_conditions.jsp?org=NSF . Paper copies may be obtained from the NSF Publications Clearinghouse, telephone (703) 292-8134 or by e-mail from [email protected] .

More comprehensive information on NSF Award Conditions and other important information on the administration of NSF awards is contained in the NSF Proposal & Award Policies & Procedures Guide (PAPPG) Chapter VII, available electronically on the NSF Website at https://www.nsf.gov/publications/pub_summ.jsp?ods_key=pappg .

Administrative and National Policy Requirements

Build America, Buy America

As expressed in Executive Order 14005, Ensuring the Future is Made in All of America by All of America's Workers (86 FR 7475), it is the policy of the executive branch to use terms and conditions of Federal financial assistance awards to maximize, consistent with law, the use of goods, products, and materials produced in, and services offered in, the United States.

Consistent with the requirements of the Build America, Buy America Act (Pub. L. 117-58, Division G, Title IX, Subtitle A, November 15, 2021), no funding made available through this funding opportunity may be obligated for infrastructure projects under an award unless all iron, steel, manufactured products, and construction materials used in the project are produced in the United States. For additional information, visit NSF's Build America, Buy America webpage.

C. Reporting Requirements

For all multi-year grants (including both standard and continuing grants), the Principal Investigator must submit an annual project report to the cognizant Program Officer no later than 90 days prior to the end of the current budget period. (Some programs or awards require submission of more frequent project reports). No later than 120 days following expiration of a grant, the PI also is required to submit a final annual project report, and a project outcomes report for the general public.

Failure to provide the required annual or final annual project reports, or the project outcomes report, will delay NSF review and processing of any future funding increments as well as any pending proposals for all identified PIs and co-PIs on a given award. PIs should examine the formats of the required reports in advance to assure availability of required data.

PIs are required to use NSF's electronic project-reporting system, available through Research.gov, for preparation and submission of annual and final annual project reports. Such reports provide information on accomplishments, project participants (individual and organizational), publications, and other specific products and impacts of the project. Submission of the report via Research.gov constitutes certification by the PI that the contents of the report are accurate and complete. The project outcomes report also must be prepared and submitted using Research.gov. This report serves as a brief summary, prepared specifically for the public, of the nature and outcomes of the project. This report will be posted on the NSF website exactly as it is submitted by the PI.

More comprehensive information on NSF Reporting Requirements and other important information on the administration of NSF awards is contained in the NSF Proposal & Award Policies & Procedures Guide (PAPPG) Chapter VII, available electronically on the NSF Website at https://www.nsf.gov/publications/pub_summ.jsp?ods_key=pappg .

VIII. Agency Contacts

Please note that the program contact information is current at the time of publishing. See program website for any updates to the points of contact.

General inquiries regarding this program should be made to:

For questions related to the use of NSF systems contact:

• NSF Help Desk: 1-800-381-1532
• Research.gov Help Desk e-mail: [email protected]

For questions relating to Grants.gov contact:

• Grants.gov Contact Center: If the Authorized Organizational Representatives (AOR) has not received a confirmation message from Grants.gov within 48 hours of submission of application, please contact via telephone: 1-800-518-4726; e-mail: [email protected] .

IX. Other Information

The NSF website provides the most comprehensive source of information on NSF Directorates (including contact information), programs and funding opportunities. Use of this website by potential proposers is strongly encouraged. In addition, "NSF Update" is an information-delivery system designed to keep potential proposers and other interested parties apprised of new NSF funding opportunities and publications, important changes in proposal and award policies and procedures, and upcoming NSF Grants Conferences . Subscribers are informed through e-mail or the user's Web browser each time new publications are issued that match their identified interests. "NSF Update" also is available on NSF's website .

Grants.gov provides an additional electronic capability to search for Federal government-wide grant opportunities. NSF funding opportunities may be accessed via this mechanism. Further information on Grants.gov may be obtained at https://www.grants.gov .

About The National Science Foundation

The National Science Foundation (NSF) is an independent Federal agency created by the National Science Foundation Act of 1950, as amended (42 USC 1861-75). The Act states the purpose of the NSF is "to promote the progress of science; [and] to advance the national health, prosperity, and welfare by supporting research and education in all fields of science and engineering."

NSF funds research and education in most fields of science and engineering. It does this through grants and cooperative agreements to more than 2,000 colleges, universities, K-12 school systems, businesses, informal science organizations and other research organizations throughout the US. The Foundation accounts for about one-fourth of Federal support to academic institutions for basic research.

NSF receives approximately 55,000 proposals each year for research, education and training projects, of which approximately 11,000 are funded. In addition, the Foundation receives several thousand applications for graduate and postdoctoral fellowships. The agency operates no laboratories itself but does support National Research Centers, user facilities, certain oceanographic vessels and Arctic and Antarctic research stations. The Foundation also supports cooperative research between universities and industry, US participation in international scientific and engineering efforts, and educational activities at every academic level.

Facilitation Awards for Scientists and Engineers with Disabilities (FASED) provide funding for special assistance or equipment to enable persons with disabilities to work on NSF-supported projects. See the NSF Proposal & Award Policies & Procedures Guide Chapter II.F.7 for instructions regarding preparation of these types of proposals.

The National Science Foundation has Telephonic Device for the Deaf (TDD) and Federal Information Relay Service (FIRS) capabilities that enable individuals with hearing impairments to communicate with the Foundation about NSF programs, employment or general information. TDD may be accessed at (703) 292-5090 and (800) 281-8749, FIRS at (800) 877-8339.

The National Science Foundation Information Center may be reached at (703) 292-5111.

The National Science Foundation promotes and advances scientific progress in the United States by competitively awarding grants and cooperative agreements for research and education in the sciences, mathematics, and engineering. To get the latest information about program deadlines, to download copies of NSF publications, and to access abstracts of awards, visit the NSF Website at 2415 Eisenhower Avenue, Alexandria, VA 22314 (NSF Information Center) (703) 292-5111 (703) 292-5090   Send an e-mail to: or telephone: (703) 292-8134 (703) 292-5111 Privacy Act And Public Burden Statements The information requested on proposal forms and project reports is solicited under the authority of the National Science Foundation Act of 1950, as amended. The information on proposal forms will be used in connection with the selection of qualified proposals; and project reports submitted by proposers will be used for program evaluation and reporting within the Executive Branch and to Congress. The information requested may be disclosed to qualified reviewers and staff assistants as part of the proposal review process; to proposer institutions/grantees to provide or obtain data regarding the proposal review process, award decisions, or the administration of awards; to government contractors, experts, volunteers and researchers and educators as necessary to complete assigned work; to other government agencies or other entities needing information regarding proposers or nominees as part of a joint application review process, or in order to coordinate programs or policy; and to another Federal agency, court, or party in a court or Federal administrative proceeding if the government is a party. Information about Principal Investigators may be added to the Reviewer file and used to select potential candidates to serve as peer reviewers or advisory committee members. See System of Record Notices , NSF-50 , "Principal Investigator/Proposal File and Associated Records," and NSF-51 , "Reviewer/Proposal File and Associated Records." Submission of the information is voluntary. Failure to provide full and complete information, however, may reduce the possibility of receiving an award. An agency may not conduct or sponsor, and a person is not required to respond to, an information collection unless it displays a valid Office of Management and Budget (OMB) control number. The OMB control number for this collection is 3145-0058. Public reporting burden for this collection of information is estimated to average 120 hours per response, including the time for reviewing instructions. Send comments regarding the burden estimate and any other aspect of this collection of information, including suggestions for reducing this burden, to: Suzanne H. Plimpton Reports Clearance Officer Policy Office, Division of Institution and Award Support Office of Budget, Finance, and Award Management National Science Foundation Alexandria, VA 22314 Cautious Optimism on OSTP Research Cybersecurity Requirements The Office of Science and Technology Policy has released its final requirements for research security programs, which federal research funding agencies will have to apply to colleges and universities that average $50 million or more per year in federal research grants. The requirements include potentially positive guidelines for research cybersecurity at covered institutions. In early 2023, the White House Office of Science and Technology Policy (OSTP) released its initial proposal for a "research security program standard requirement." All federal research funding agencies would have to apply the requirement to colleges and universities that receive more than $50 million per year in federal research funding. Footnote 1 The development of these comprehensive research security mandates stems from National Security Presidential Memorandum – 33 (NSPM-33), "Supported Research and Development National Security Policy." When finalized, the "standard requirement" would establish the basic parameters for the research security programs that covered institutions must have in place to continue competing for federal research grants. Most of the proposed framework addresses research security issues such as faculty conflicts of interest and commitment and research talent recruitment programs of foreign governments. However, it also includes a research cybersecurity section that essentially would make the cybersecurity guidelines for Federal contract information (FCI) the standards for higher education research cybersecurity. As the Policy team discussed in our review of this issue last summer, EDUCAUSE member feedback indicated that the FCI basic safeguards do not fit well with higher education research environments because they are primarily intended for administrative contexts and data. Footnote 2 EDUCAUSE urged OSTP to revamp its proposed research security program guidance and focus on allowing institutions to pursue a risk management approach to research cybersecurity. Rather than the one-size-fits-all checklist model that the FCI guidelines would impose, a risk management approach would enable institutions to prioritize cybersecurity measures and resources based on national security risks associated with research areas and projects. EDUCAUSE was not alone in asking OSTP to alter its course and base its research security program guidance on risk management. The Association of American Universities (AAU), the Association of Public and Land-grant Universities (APLU), and the Council on Governmental Relations (COGR) also stressed the need for a risk management emphasis in other areas of higher education research security. Fortunately, OSTP heard the combined input of our respective associations. Rather than rushing forward with research security program requirements that largely reflected those in its original proposal, OSTP took roughly one year to rethink its guidance before releasing the final version on July 9, 2024. The final research security program guidelines do not base research cybersecurity program requirements on the FCI safeguards. Instead, OSTP points to a pending report on higher education research cybersecurity from the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST). As the first element of the standardized requirement, federal research agencies shall require institutions of higher education to certify that the institution will implement a cybersecurity program consistent with the cybersecurity resource for research institutions described in the CHIPS and Science Act, [18] within one year after the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) of the Department of Commerce publishes that resource. Footnote 3 Footnote 18 in the memorandum (in brackets above) identifies the relevant NIST report as NIST Interagency Report (IR) 8481: Cybersecurity for Research: Findings and Possible Paths Forward , which is currently available in "Initial Public Draft" (IPD) form. The CHIPS and Science Act provision from which the report stems required NIST to explore the resources it could develop to better support research cybersecurity at higher education institutions. Footnote 4 NIST conducted substantial outreach to EDUCAUSE and its members in pursuing the project, leading to a draft that largely incorporates the recommendations of our research cybersecurity community. It is a welcome development to see OSTP cite the report as the governing reference for research cybersecurity under its research security program guidelines. Although OSTP's reliance on a report that reflects substantial EDUCAUSE member input provides a basis for cautious optimism regarding how federal research agencies will implement research cybersecurity requirements, there is still room for agency compliance efforts to jump the rails. The OSTP memorandum does not explain or provide parameters for what constitutes "a cybersecurity program consistent with" the NIST report (emphasis added). Footnote 5 Given the overall tenor of the guidelines, which stress the importance of federal research agencies providing substantial flexibility and discretion to higher education institutions in establishing and maintaining research security programs, research agencies might reasonably develop policies and procedures that allow institutions to draw from the range of resources identified in the NIST report—as well as models and frameworks similar to them—in determining the basis of their programs. However, the lack of guidance on what "consistent with" means may leave space for agencies to mandate that their grantees implement specific frameworks or measures presented in the NIST report. Such a development could produce substantial risks for institutions and agencies alike, given that not all resources identified in the draft NIST report will necessarily lead to optimal—or even appropriate—outcomes in all higher education research contexts. Our concern about the potential for agencies to mandate inappropriate requirements is exacerbated by the fact that the NIST report was not written for the purposes for which OSTP is applying it. As previously mentioned, the CHIPS and Science Act charged NIST with identifying ways the agency could better support higher education research cybersecurity. Given that task, the current draft of the report—not surprisingly—focuses on highlighting a variety of options that institutions might explore to advance their research cybersecurity posture. This focus does not exactly match how OSTP wants to use the report in its research security program guidelines. The advisory nature of the NIST report may lend itself to the institutional flexibility and discretion that the OSTP memo implies should be the basis of federal agency approaches to research (cyber)security. However, the report does not provide clear direction about what cybersecurity should look like for research security programs that comply with NSPM-33. Without a definitive framework, both research agencies and higher education institutions may struggle to determine what constitutes compliance. Fortunately, EDUCAUSE members should not have to wait long to get a sense of whether federal agencies that fund research will either try to be highly prescriptive or allow covered institutions to choose what elements of the NIST report—or options similar to them—will form the basis of their research cybersecurity programs. The memo from OSTP states that agencies will have six months from the date the memo was published to provide OSTP and the Office of Management and Budget (OMB) with their proposed implementation plans for the research security program guidelines. Once those agency plans are submitted, colleges and universities should be able to better understand what agencies' compliance regimes might look like. Agencies will then have another six months to implement their policies and processes, with institutions getting up to eighteen months from that point to ensure that they have compliant research security programs. Footnote 6 Based on these time frames, we should see research agency implementation plans by early January 2025, with the final execution of those plans due by mid-2025. Institutions would then have to achieve compliance with the relevant agency policies and processes by around December 2026. Remember, though, that OSTP provides a unique timeline for its research cybersecurity requirements. As stated above, institutions will have one year from the publication of the NIST final report to ensure that they have research cybersecurity programs that are "consistent with" the report. With that in mind, NIST could try to align the release of its final report with the timeline for institutional compliance with OSTP's research security program guidelines. In this case, the overall measures mandated by the OSTP guidelines would have to be in place by the end of 2026. However, nothing in the OSTP memo precludes NIST from starting the research cybersecurity clock much sooner by releasing its final report at some point later this year or in early 2025. At this juncture, we will have to wait for NIST to provide more information about its plans, which will most likely include making some adjustments between the draft and final versions to account for how research agencies and higher education institutions will have to make use of the final report for compliance purposes. EDUCAUSE will continue to monitor developments in this space and look for opportunities to inform OSTP, NIST, and agency implementation efforts. In the interim, EDUCAUSE members should review the draft NIST report for reference points that align with their current institutional research cybersecurity program and for resources they might find useful in strengthening their research cybersecurity posture given NSPM-33 and the OSTP research security guidelines that derive from it. Arati Prabhakar, Memorandum for the Heads of Federal Research Agencies, "Guidelines for Research Security Programs at Covered Institutions," (Office of Science and Technology Policy, Executive Office of the President, July 9, 2024), 3. Jump back to footnote 1 in the text. ↩ EDUCAUSE letter to Stacy Murphy, Deputy Chief Operations Officer/Security Officer, Office of Science and Technology Policy,  "Regarding Comment on Research Security Programs,"  June 5, 2023. Jump back to footnote 2 in the text. ↩ Prabhakar, "Guidelines for Research Security Programs," 4. Jump back to footnote 3 in the text. ↩ Jarret Cummings, "NIST Explores Developing Research Cybersecurity Resources for Higher Ed,"   EDUCAUSE Review , August 1, 2023. Jump back to footnote 4 in the text. ↩ Prabhakar, "Guidelines for Research Security Programs," 4–5. Jump back to footnote 5 in the text. ↩ Ibid., 9. Jump back to footnote 6 in the text. ↩ Jarret Cummings is Senior Advisor, Policy and Government Relations, at EDUCAUSE. © 2024 EDUCAUSE. The content of this work is licensed under a Creative Commons BY-NC-ND 4.0 International License. 361 COMMENTS Research Grants on Education: Small The Small Research Grants on Education Program supports education research projects that will contribute to the improvement of education, broadly conceived, with budgets up to $50,000 for projects ranging from one to five years. We accept applications three times per year. This program is "field-initiated" in that proposal submissions are ... 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