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This report highlights the findings of the 2007 CHE Committee of Visitors review of the NSF Chemistry Division's operations and research portfolio. It identifies areas of commendation and concern, and provides recommendations for strategic planning and improvement.
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Report from the 2007 CHE Committee of Visitors February 7-9, 2007
Findings: Operations The Chemistry Division is doing an excellent job overall. We have high praise for the quality work of the Program Officers, staff assistants and Director Luis Echegoyen and Executive Officer Janice Hicks.
Findings: Operations The Division is performing very well in: • Identifying and funding the best science. • Processing proposals in a timely manner. • Evaluating carefully the proposals and proposal reviews in making funding decisions. • Playing a leadership role in the community • Operating with the highest level of integrity. • Working hard to bring in new investigators and reviewers to the system. These are particularly impressive accomplishments given the ever increasing volume of proposals and the financial constraints.
Findings: Research Portfolio Good news: CHE has an excellent portfolio of programs for funding individual investigators (IIA’s), collaboratives, educational programs, instrumentation proposals and centers.
Findings: Research Portfolio Bad news: • Although the quality of science funded is high, we have concerns that there is a large fraction of fundamental transformational chemistry that PIs are not submitting to NSF CHE because of the dwindling grant size and the low success rates for funding. • Many exceptionally good proposals with exceptionally good PIs are not being funded because of budget constraints. This is noticeably worse than was found in the previous COV of 2004.
Findings: Research Portfolio Bad News: • The budget constraints have reduced the ability to fund an adequate number of REU programs, a serious problem given the high impact and high visibility of these programs. • For the single investigator grants in particular, the grant sizes are generally too small to be effective. • CHE has strived to extend the best research grants to four years - but the budget constraints have limited their ability to expand more of these to the longer duration.
Conclusion: Research Portfolio The continued low funding level of the CHE (lowest in MPS) is having a disastrous effect on the research portfolio and the chemistry community. It is clear that it is negatively impacting the ability for chemists to conduct the transformational research that NSF seeks to support, and to train the large numbers of chemistry students for the industrial, government laboratory and academic workforce in this transformational research.
Recommendations for CHE 1. The Division needs to develop a Strategic Plan to include: • Scientific goals and benchmarks to measure progress. • Strategies for articulating the high value of the current research that is being done. • Goals for the chemical workforce including students, postdoctoral fellows and the professoriate.
Recommendations for CHE The Strategic Plan should include: • Goals for grant size, grant duration, number of grants and special funding modes. • Guidelines for determining the optimal mix of single investigator grants and other modalities such as small groups and centers. • Strategies for partnering with other divisions and agencies on research and activities of common interest. • Strategies for assuring robust support for instrumentation and instrument development.
Recommendations for CHE 2. Increase the number of on-site permanent staff officers. 3. Continue to educate the community on the Broader Impact Criterion and importance of a diverse scientific workforce. 4. Increase the support for REU sites, instrumentation and instrument development. 5. Continue to communicate to the community the strong commitment that CHE has to the single investigator grants that have played such an important role in transformational chemistry in this country.
Recommendations for CHE 6. The COV urges CHE to improve the written feedback and verbal feedback given to PIs after the proposal review process. This is especially important for declinations. 7. Written feedback from panel reviews generally needs to be improved. 8. The COV encourages the division to continue to educate the community on the importance of (1) reviewing proposals and (2) providing substantive and objective comments in their reviews. 9. Continue to work towards the goal of 80% of the proposals processed within 6 months of receipt.
Recommendations for CHE • Continue to provide opportunities for small and large group interdisciplinary research projects of truly exceptional quality. 11. The COV urges CHE to conduct assessments of: • New programs such as the CCIs, CRCs, CRIF- Cyber, and URCs. • The new windows of proposal submission on the community and the Division. • The use of broader impacts criterion on funded work. • The impact of loss of cost sharing for instrumentation.
Thanks… The COV members would like to express their appreciation for the hard work of the Division program officers and staff, especially Executive Director Janice Hicks, for allowing this review to be conducted with exemplary efficiency and transparency.
