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This research paper describes a preliminary analysis of panel summaries of proposals submitted to the National Science Foundation’s (NSF’s) Scholarships for Science, Technology, Engineering and Mathematics (S-STEM) program. S-STEM provides awards to institutions to fund scholarships and to implement evidence-based strategies to recruit, retain, and graduate students from low-income backgrounds who have the academic potential to succeed in eligible STEM disciplines. The ultimate goal of the program is to build the US STEM workforce. In 2017, Rice University received funding from NSF to support teams of principal investigators and their co- investigators, who were experts in educational or related research areas, to attend a two-day workshop that was developed to help them prepare more competitive proposals to the S-STEM program. The emphasis was on investigators from predominantly undergraduate institutions, primarily those located in Established Program to Stimulate Competitive Research (EPSCoR) jurisdictions and/or designated as Minority-Serving Institutions. One of the workshop’s aims was to investigate factors that impact the success (or lack thereof) of proposals to the S-STEM program. We began with examining the feedback participants received from review panels on their proposal submissions. In this case study, we compare panel summaries for five S-STEM proposals submitted from five different institutions, exploring the similarities and differences in the overall reviews, as well as the strengths and weaknesses cited for both awarded and declined proposals that were awarded and declined in the context of their alignment with NSF’s merit review criteria. This is submitted for consideration as a traditional paper presentation. 

Rice University received funding from the National Science Foundation (NSF) to host workshops designed to help faculty members at predominantly undergraduate institutions (PUIs) develop competitive proposals to the Scholarships in Science, Technology, Engineering, and Mathematics (S-STEM) program. S-STEM projects provide scholarships and other support to low-income students who demonstrate the academic potential to succeed in STEM disciplines with the aim of increasing their presence in the U.S. STEM workforce and/or graduate programs. Our recruitment efforts focused primarily on PUIs located in Experimental Program to Stimulate Competitive Research (EPSCoR) jurisdictions. An initial search of NSF’s awards database showed that despite enrolling the majority of students, PUIs – associate’s colleges in particular – received a disproportionately small fraction of S-STEM awards. Additionally, at the time of our search, Fiscal Year 2016 (FY16) awards had been made to institutions in only 50% of EPSCoR jurisdictions. By increasing the capacity of faculty members at PUIs in EPSCoR jurisdictions to successfully compete for funding, we can help improve the number and diversity of the institutions students S-STEM supports. Analyses are not yet available on the status of all proposals submitted by workshop participants; however, we are using project summaries as one preliminary, indirect indicator of likely proposal quality. In this paper, we present the rubric and describe the results of the project summary evaluations as preliminary findings to address the question: To what degree and in what ways do participants’ project summaries change from pre- to post-workshop? The results have implications for prospective PIs who are seeking guidance on strengthening areas of S-STEM proposals.