I'm heartbroken (about NSF)

I just saw the news that the National Science Foundation has both stopped making new awards and stopped paying out on existing awards. In addition, they will likely terminate many more awards this week.

You can read elsewhere about all of the research that’s being terminated, all of the good science that won’t get done, all of the people who could have potentially been recruited into STEM disciplines. But I want to take a moment to recognize the NSF program officers, the proposal review process they oversee, and the panelists who contribute their time doing reviewing.

I got my first NSF award in 1999. I was mentored through the proposal process by someone who had previously received several NSF grants — definitely the only reason why I got funded on my first try. Receiving an award then puts you on people’s radar as a potential proposal reviewer, and I pretty soon thereafter began making the trek to DC to participate on review panels. In that process I was lucky enough to work with some amazing program officers, and I reviewed for a number of different solicitations which allowed me to begin to get a sense of the range of programs NSF funds.

Fast forward to 2013 when I became a program officer, a PO, in DUE, the Division of Undergraduate Education. That’s when I really learned how things work.

First of all, the publication of a solicitation is the culmination of a lot of work behind the scenes with many program officers, division directors, and directorate leadership weighing in on and editing a draft which then goes up the chain for final approval. Then the proposals come in. The “cognizant program officers” — the POs responsible for that program — divide up the proposals and form review panels of people in the appropriate discipline and research area. Each reviewer is responsible for reading, reviewing, and rating some number of proposals. Then the review panel takes place. Each proposal gets its moment in the sun, discussed extensively by the panelists who reviewed it, and then categorized (usually in 3 buckets: Highly Competitive, Competitive, Not Competitive) by the entire panel who have been listening to the discussion and asking questions. At the end of the process, the entire panel signs off on the panel summary and agrees to the ranking, so everyone has to be in agreement with the final decision.

Once the panel is done, all the POs for that solicitation discuss the proposals. In particular, this is a time to look at any that were borderline and make sure that the categorizations were consistent across the full solicitation. Finally those applicants who will be declined are notified, and those who will receive awards are notified and go through a few more steps before actually receiving the award. This full process, from proposal submission to notification is 6-9 months.

Let’s be clear. Nobody does this for the money. NSF POs who are permanent employees are paid on the pay scale for Federal employees. NSF POs who are temporary, like I was, are paid their academic salary amortized to a 12-month amount. Reviewers are paid an amount that is essentially a token, an honorarium, that is far from adequate compensation for the time it takes to thoughtfully review 10-15 proposals (each 15 pages long plus references and budgets), prepare reviews, and sit through several days of panel discussion.

So, why do we do it? Because we love science, and we love the idea of helping to make more good science happen. Those of us on the education side love the idea of helping to make more scientists. And it is beyond heartbreaking to watch that effort, that commitment, that love of science and the scientific endeavor be tossed aside like yesterday’s trash by the Musk-Trump administration. And let’s be super clear — all those tech broligarchs who sat behind Trump at the inauguration would not have a dime, would not have a company at all, if it were not for the fundamental scientific and technological developments that have been funded by Federal agencies! Like your internet? Thank the Feds. How about your cellphone, your cloud computing storage? Oh yeah, thank the Feds for that too. Like your Google search engine? Like the fact that GPS helps you get where you need to go on time? I could go on and on….but behind all of these were hard working program officers and reviewers in a Federal agency, many of them at the National Science Foundation, and it is really heartbreaking that it’s being undone with a snap of the fingers, as if none of it really matters.

So hats off and job well done to the hard working folks at NSF. Though my time there was short (a story for another day!) it made a deep impression on me, and every time I get an award I know all the effort that went into making that happen (when I get a decline notice too!). I hope that more people will come to appreciate the work you’ve been doing, and maybe somehow we’ll get the funding spigot opened back up so that you can get back to doing the wonderful work of loving science and helping others love science every day.