Grant Partnership Opportunities on NSF Broader Impacts

Last updated September 14, 2022

Are you developing a National Science Foundation (NSF) research proposal and looking for a partner to assist with broader impact components? The Paleontological Research Institution has an established and successful record of delivering impactful outreach products via NSF grant partnerships with Principal Investigators (PIs) around the United States. We have many years of experience developing nationally-recognized outreach and educational materials and programming. PRI has a team of half-a-dozen PhD scientists/science educators who contribute to the content development; we can offer more support in specialties most familiar to us, such paleontology, evolution, Earth history, and climate change. We would be happy to brainstorm ideas with you!

Below are overviews of some of the ways that we can partner with you, including examples of prior broader impact products that have been developed at PRI. In each case, PRI's role is to implement and promote the broader impacts vehicle. For example, we will make an exhibit, construct a website, produce a video, run a teacher workshop, write a lesson plan, and so on, and then market that resource to communities of interest (e.g., advertise the exhibit, recruit teachers to the workshop, etc.). We co-develop content with our partners and help shape and edit the content so that it's accessible to the target audience. PRI's costs are primarily staff time (we're mostly soft-money funded) and materials (if any). The role of our PI partners is primarily to provide expertise in their area of specialty and funds to help us carry out the project. Partners vary in how much involvement they wish to have in carrying out the broader impacts. Generally, the content of the project is broader and less technical than the research itself.

Costs vary considerably depending upon the deliverables and level of PRI involvement. In many cases, it will make sense for PRI to be a subaward on a PI’s proposal. For some collaborative projects, however, PRI may wish to have a co-PI on the proposal and submit an independent budget. PRI’s current (as of July 2022) federally-negotiated IDC rate is 58% IDC and its fringe rate is 28%.

Screenshot of the Earth@Home website homepage.

Websites

PRI’s family of websites collectively receive about 900,000 visits a year by users from almost every country on Earth.

Major active website projects include:

  • Earth@Home: Student- and teacher-friendly introductions to the Earth and its history; nearly 300 pages now online. Includes regional guides to the Earth science of the United States; growing Digital Encyclopedia of Earth Science online textbook; Virtual Collection of 3D models of rock and mineral specimens; database of Virtual Fieldwork Experiences; additional learning and teaching resources.

  • Digital Atlas of Ancient Life: Tools to identify fossils and learn about ancient life. Includes fossil field guides, the Digital Encyclopedia of Ancient Life (DEAL) online textbook, and a large Virtual Collection of 3D models of fossil specimens.

  • Climate Change and Energy Education: We strive to help make sense of present and potential future change, while also increasing understanding of global change in Earth’s past. Corresponding resources on PRI’s main website that will soon be ported to Earth@Home: Climate Change.

Collaboration ideas:

Grant funding supports:

  • PRI staff time, potentially including content development in collaboration with PIs and their teams.

  • Web hosting costs.

Contact: To discuss potential collaborations involving Earth@Home or the Digital Encyclopedia of Ancient Life, please contact Associate Director of Science Education Jon Hendricks.

Composite image showing four photographs of the Six-Legged Science exhibit at the Museum of the Earth in Ithaca, NY.

Temporary Museum Exhibit

Thousands of Museum of the Earth visitors explore our temporary exhibits each year.

Temporary exhibits draw visitors to the Museum of the Earth to see fascinating and/or beautiful specimens and to learn about an important topic. The exhibits stay on display for approximately 9 months, typically launching in March and remaining on display until the end of the year. Development of online versions of all temporary exhibits is now part of our workflow and these usually launch to the public at the same time as the physical exhibit. The online exhibits typically contain all of the written content and most of the imagery used in the physical exhibit. Online versions of the exhibits stay on our Museum of the Earth website indefinitely and are visited by people around the world long after the physical exhibit comes down.

Our current temporary exhibit “Six-Legged Science: Unlocking the Secrets of the Insect World,” for example, features the Cornell University Insect Collections and was developed as a Broader Impact on an NSF grant to Dr. Corrie S. Moreau in the Department of Entomology at Cornell. The online version of this exhibit may be explored here.

Grant funding supports:

  • PRI staff time, potentially including content development in collaboration with PIs and their teams.

  • Materials to build the exhibit.

Because the materials to create an exhibit are expensive and the project involves several months of staff time to design, exhibits are relatively expensive. This sort of project requires other organizational approvals as well. Smaller exhibits projects, such as adding a case to the current permanent exhibits at the Museum of the Earth or Cayuga Nature Center, are also possible, but depend on the specific needs for those exhibits.

Contact: To discuss potential collaborations involving temporary museum exhibits, please contact Associate Director for Outreach Rob Ross and Director of Exhibitions Helaina Blume.

Photograph of teachers looking at fossil specimens in boxes.

Other ways to collaborate

Beyond websites and exhibits, there are many other ways in which we might partner.

Materials for the classroom and teacher professional development workshops

PRI develops secondary school/college lesson plans, activities, videos, and other curricular elements. Currently most of these relate to climate change and energy, but we've done many other topics over the years. PRI also hosts online or in-person teacher workshop(s), and curricula and workshops are often paired. Face-to-face workshops may take place at PRI's Museum of the Earth or Cayuga Nature Center or a conference such as the Science Teacher Association of New York State; online workshops can reach national audiences but are more limited in what can be done with the teachers. Workshops often include participation by the partnering scientist and/or graduate students. We can also focus on specific components, such as a YouTube video series or series of workshops. In the Greenhouse: Exploring Climate Change is our best developed example of a video series.

Science in the Real or Virtual Pub

PRI runs a Science in the Real or Virtual Pub series. We facilitate a virtual online or in-person presentation by PIs or a post-doc or graduate student about research. We would host the event, do the marketing, and help make it accessible to a general audience.

More

Other areas of PRI Science Education that could lend themselves to Broader Impact collaborations include:

  • the Cayuga Nature Center summer camp (pre-K to elementary school-age), 

  • K-12 school programs at the Museum and the Nature Center, 

  • tours and public events at the Museum and the Nature Center, 

  • quarterly iNaturalist bioblitzes and other biodiversity documentation, 

  • ongoing environmental monitoring at the Nature Center and Museum (weather stations, CO2 monitors, soil moisture and temperature monitors, phenology, etc.), 

  • offsite nature/geology walks and fossil collecting trips, 

  • PRI's annual Teacher Resource Day (giving away specimens and offering presentations), 

  • website blogs and social media, and 

  • infrastructure such as PRI education specimen collections and scientific instruments for workshops and school programs. 

Contact: We are open to partnering on these existing programs as well or discussing new ideas! To discuss potential collaborations please contact Associate Director for Outreach Rob Ross.

Examples of PRI-Created Broader Impacts

Below are examples of PRI-created broader impact resources that have a web component. Some of these were created as broader impacts on NSF grants to PRI Principal Investigators, while others were created as subawards on NSF grants to PIs outside of PRI.