SPARC continues to host drop-in virtual office hours Tue-Thu from 10 to 10:50 a.m. via Zoom.
Read below for important updates from sponsors and SPARC.
NSF is decommissioning FastLane. Friday, September 29, 2023 (11:00 PM Eastern Time) is the last day to access FastLane submitted and in-progress letters of intent, proposals, and supplemental funding requests. See the FastLane Decommissioning page and Instructions to Access and Download/Print FastLane Letters of Intent, Proposals and Supplemental Funding Requests for details.
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 ).