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.
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 ).