Updates
Join us for Virtual Office Hours - We're here to answer your questions!
SPARC offers virtual office hours every Tuesday, Wednesday, and Thursday from 10-10:50am. At least one pre-award and one post-award staff member will be available during each session. So no matter your question(s), we will have someone who can assist you real-time.
Dedicated virtual sessions provide faculty and staff the opportunity to ask questions, discuss sponsored project opportunities with sponsored programs officers (pre-award), and address award management with grants and contracts officers (post-award).
Easily attend as many virtual sessions as you like simply by clicking the link below:
Typically an open Q&A format, screen-shares and/or slides may be presented as needed. For any technical issues, please send an email here.
Read below for important updates from SPARC.
SPARC Holiday Office Closings and Proposal Deadlines
Dear Colleagues,
As the holiday season is rapidly approaching, we would like to remind everyone that this time of year also brings some important changes to our schedules. In light of this, we want to remind you of the impending proposal deadlines for upcoming projects.
SPARC Holiday Office Closings and Proposal Deadlines:
The SPARC office will be officially closed November 28 – November 29. If any proposals are due the week before/after or during these days (proposal deadline November 20 – December 1), please ensure your OSPREY proposal is fully routed and approved and ready to be submitted by November 26. SPARC cannot guarantee that any proposal and/or materials not fully routed and approved by November 26 will be submitted by our office and as such it will be the sole responsibility of the PI to submit. Please note our office is the only office authorized and available to submit grants via any government portal that is not PI based (ex. Grants.gov, Research.gov, NIH ASSIST, S2S via OSPREY, etc.). Please remember OSPREY proposals must be in their finalized state when routed for approval (including a narrative, scope of work, and budget justification) and must have all sponsor required materials uploaded as an attachment at time of route.
The SPARC office will be officially closed December 24 – January 2. If any proposals are due the week before/after or during these days (proposal deadline December 16 – January 6), please ensure your OSPREY proposal is fully routed and approved and ready to be submitted by December 16. SPARC cannot guarantee that any proposal and/or materials not fully routed and approved by December 16 will be submitted by our office and, as such, will be the sole responsibility of the PI to submit. Please note our office is the only office authorized and available to submit grants via any government portal that is not PI based (ex. Grants.gov, Research.gov, NIH ASSIST, S2S via OSPREY, etc.). Please remember OSPREY proposals must be in their finalized state when routed for approval (including a narrative, scope of work, and budget justification) and must have all sponsor required materials uploaded as an attachment at time of route.
While we encourage you to embrace the holiday season with enthusiasm, we also appreciate your dedication to meeting these deadlines. Your cooperation in ensuring a smooth workflow during this festive period is greatly appreciated.
Effort Reporting Office Hours
NSF Fastlane
NSF has decommissioned FastLane. Friday, September 29, 2023 was the last day to access FastLane submitted and in-progress letters of intent, proposals, and supplemental funding requests. See the FastLane Decommissioning page for details.
PUI Status
With UNCW's success in graduating more than 20 Ph.D. students in the last two years in areas supported by the National Science Foundation, the institution is no longer considered a Primarily Undergraduate Institution (PUI) by NSF.
WHY IT MATTERS
With this change, effectively immediately, UNCW is no longer eligible to apply for funding from the "Research in Undergraduate Institutions" (RUI) program. Further, the standard 30% cost-share for non-PUI eligible institutions on awards from the NSF Major Research Instrumentation program will be waived by NSF for five-years starting in FY2023, due to the CHIPS and Science act of 2022.
UNCW currently remains eligible for the NIH Academic Research Enhancement Awards ("AREA") for Undergraduate-Focused Institutions (R15) opportunities, as this change does not impact these opportunities.
NEXT STEPS
If you are currently writing an NSF proposal to submit using the RUI mechanism, NSF recommends submitting directly to the most relevant research program. If you are unsure about the best program, NSF further recommends conducting a keyword search in the NSF awards database to identify pervious funding for similar research efforts. The SPARC pre-award team is available to assist (proposals@uncw.edu ).