CAREER Proposal Reasons for decline summary of comments by reviewers

APPROACH 1. Benefit of, reason for, and critical issues involved with research within subfield or in the larger field not clearly articulated. 2. Many unrelated tasks or just too many tasks diluting the research. 3. Lacking clear description of problem within a fundamental question or testable hypothesis 4. Proposed methods do not address the stated research goals or are lacking altogether 5. Present at least some preliminary data 6. Lacks thorough literature search for adequate overview of state of the art and showing awareness of relevant activity in the field; too much text devoted to past accomplishments or failure to establish significance of your work; research not focused/lacks detail; less than rigorous presentation/ 7. Did not approach the proposed research from a scientific perspective. Integration of scientific issues from a theoretical perspective will strengthen the proposal (This is where the develop design issues of approach come in) BROADER IMPACTS 8. Integration of research and education, diversity issues, impact on underrepresented groups were not clearly discussed, weak, uninspired or missing; at a minimum participate in school and university programs; too much focus on the PIs own development 9. Develop or strengthen collaborative activities 10. Missing evaluation plan LOGIC AND CAREER PLAN 11. Faulty logic, errors in plan of attack, poor experimental design, bad analytical methods (deal breakers) 12. No clear plan of long-term goals or how this fits into the goals of the department or institution 13. Unrealistic, sloppy, incomplete (misspellings, grammatical errors) 14. Missing timeline INNOVATION 15. EDUCATION: Course development (routine teaching), involvement of graduate students, training activities are typical, lack innovation these are expected of course, but are not novel, uninspired 16. RESEARCH: absence of innovative ideas; only incremental advances, not high risk; not a truly fresh perspective; did not differentiate from own past work similar approaches have been funded in the past; AT LEAST 60% of project description should be proposed work 17. Unrealistically over-ambitious for time/money or too narrowly focused QUALIFICATIONS 18. Lack sufficient track record in terms of solid journal publications 19. Resources and facilities not in place 20. Missing expertise; inadequate skills or credentials for proposed task 21. Great problem without a reasonable chance that they can accomplish it. Sources: Tim Anderson, CAREER Proposal Development, Feb. 2009, Univ. Florida (http://www.faculty.eng.ufl.edu/facultydevelopment/documents/fidef/CAREER%20Proposal%) Michael Pazzini, VPR Rutgers, former NSF Program officer in CISE IIS (2002-2005), http://orsp.rutgers.edu/downloads/Presentations/2006/NSF/1.Dr.Pazzani.pdf Sylvia Spengler, current CISE IIS Program Officer, CAREER Proposal writing and other insights (http://orsp.rutgers.edu/downloads/Presentations/2007/NSF/1.%20Sylvia%20Spengler.pdf) Parag Chitnis, NSF Deputy Division Director, BIO MCB, QEM Workshop, February 27-28, 2009 (http://www.qem.org/QEM2009Workshops/Career09presentations/2009%20QEM%20CAREER%20Chitnis.p pt.htm)
CAREERSeminar, LaurieGarton,TEESSRD,February2011