For many years, the National Science Foundation (NSF) has been supporting the sciences by giving out grants to help pay for science projects by promising research scientists. Unfortunately, the bulk of such grants have gone to male students, and many of those that have gone to women haven’t resulted in completion of projects as many women found the struggle between doing the work, satisfying the milestones of the NSF grant system and starting families to be too much to handle. Now however, as reported by Jeffrey Mervis in the journal, Science, comes an announcement by the White House that changes the way NSF awards are to be granted and monitored to hopefully make things easier for women interested in applying for such grants. The net result should be more women delving into science projects, a priority of the Obama Administration.
Up till now, when a person had a good idea for a science project, they wrote a proposal and submitted a budget to the NSF. If the NSF thought the idea was a good one, they’d dole out funds and the project would begin. Generally this meant setting up a lab, hiring people and laying out plans for how the project would proceed. At each point along the way, progress reports would be compiled and presented to the NSF to prove that the work was actually being done. If the work was being done, but the results obtained weren’t what was expected, pressure would be exerted by the NSF to meet goals with threat of discontinuation of funds.
This new announcement changes that policy by first allowing more time for a project to get underway and allowing grantees to defer the start of the project if so desired for up to one year. The new rule is intended to help researchers get their life in order before embarking on a long term, oftentimes stressful project.
Another change is allowing grantees to have virtual reviews of their project, meaning they no longer are made to travel to a NSF site to present their findings, thus making life easier for them, and by extension, their families.
In an even bigger boost for women, another rule allows grantees to actually leave the project they are working on for a short period of time for family leave, so long as a suitable stand-in can be found; the idea being that the project will continue to move forward even in the absence of the grantee.
As a whole, it is hoped the new rules will make applying for and running NSF projects a more family friendly process.