Mid-Scale Research Infrastructure Incubators and Conferences for STEM Education Research with a Focus on Education Equity
Funding Agency:
- National Science Foundation
With this Dear Colleague Letter (DCL), the National Science Foundation's (NSF) Directorate for Education and Human Resources (EHR) notifies the community of a collaboration with the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, Schmidt Futures, and the Walton Family Foundation to offer Incubator and Conference proposal opportunities that support the development of Mid-Scale Research Infrastructure (RI) efforts, especially those that enable research on the assets and needs of those traditionally left out of STEM and that lead to greater education equity. Mid-Scale RI is a relatively new concept for the science, technology, engineering, and mathematics (STEM) education community because STEM education research has traditionally been distributed, individual, and less reliant on instrumentation. Improving the speed and scale at which STEM education research advances, however, requires national research infrastructures. Through this DCL, NSF aims to conceptualize and consolidate viable infrastructure ideas to support STEM education research that will transform teaching and learning.
This DCL establishes an opportunity for the field to incubate Mid-Scale RI ideas in STEM education, allowing for idea progression through conception and planning, and placing potential PIs on a path to develop future Mid-Scale RI proposals. As one of NSF's Big Ideas, the NSF-wide Mid-Scale RI initiative is designed to support the implementation of research capabilities with total project costs between $6M and $100M. These projects directly enable advances in fundamental STEM in one or more of the research and education domains supported by the NSF (see previous solicitations NSF 21-505 and NSF 21-537).
Mid-Scale RI Incubators and Conferences are designed to link researchers, educators, communities, non-profits, for-profits, governments, and industry to develop ideas around field-identified infrastructure needs and concepts that will transform STEM education research, particularly at the preK-12 level. These awards provide resources to convene partners, establish collaborative mechanisms, and develop innovative plans for enduring infrastructure resources that would significantly impact education research at speed and scale, with a special focus on supporting the learning needs of students whose talents, intelligence, and entrepreneurship have been historically unrecognized and underused in the nation's STEM enterprise.
Although the RCN solicitation states that award duration may be for up to 5 years, Mid-Scale RI Incubators should request up to 2 years of funding with maximum budgets of $500,000.
The budget for conferences is generally limited to $50,000 but under exceptional circumstances may be supported up to $99,000.
The target dates (by 5 p.m. local submitter's time) for incubator proposal submission are:
- September 1, 2022
- March 1, 2023
The target date for conference proposal submission is July 1, 2022, 5 p.m. local submitter's time.
Prior to submitting a Mid-Scale RI Incubator or Conference proposal, the PI must send an email to edumidsc@nsf.gov to ensure that the proposal fits the goals of this DCL.