Events

Data are transforming nearly every aspect of higher education, scientific discovery, healthcare, and workforce development. Yet many educators, researchers, and institutional leaders have had little formal preparation in applying data science to their teaching, scholarship, program evaluation, or strategic decision-making. Data to Impact is a four-part professional development series designed to build practical data science capacity among faculty, researchers, administrators, and education leaders. Rather than focusing solely on programming or advanced analytics, the series demonstrates how data science can become a powerful tool for solving real-world problems, strengthening research, improving student outcomes, informing institutional decisions, and increasing competitiveness for grants and partnerships. Through interactive webinars, participants will progress from foundational concepts to real-world applications in STEM, education, research administration, and institutional leadership. By the end of the series, participants will leave with practical tools, new perspectives and an action plan for applying data science within their own disciplines and organizations. Presenter(s): Amaka Nwankwo Register

This workshop will introduce the No-code Entry Alignment Toolkit (NEAT) as a human-in-the-loop AI workflow for sponsored programs data cleanup, research administration capacity building, and institutional collaboration. The session will focus on a practical problem many institutions face: inconsistent free-text entries, repeated spreadsheet cleanup, reporting burden, and loss of staff time that could otherwise be devoted to faculty, proposal development, compliance, and strategic research growth. Rather than presenting NEAT as a product pitch, the workshop will frame it as a reusable method that Emerging Research Institutions can adapt to their own administrative workflows. Participants will learn how to start with one low-risk field, define a controlled vocabulary, use AI to suggest categories with confidence and a clear rationale, preserve human approval as the final decision, and build a mapping dictionary that serves as institutional memory over time. The workshop will also invite participating institutions to identify their own use cases, such as sponsor-name cleanup, grant portfolio labeling, proposal tracking, research-domain classification, or reporting preparation. The goal is to use the session as a starting point for collaboration, beta testing, and cross-institutional learning around responsible AI-supported research administration workflows. Register

This webinar examines the similarities, differences, assets, and challenges that characterize K–12 STEM teaching and learning ecosystems across urban, suburban, and rural settings. Moving beyond deficit-based comparisons, the session will explore how place-based resources, community knowledge, institutional partnerships, informal and non-formal learning opportunities, and local STEM industries can be leveraged to strengthen STEM education. Particular attention will be given to how differences in access and opportunity shape STEM identity, participation, and achievement, and how educators and community partners can build more connected and equitable learning ecosystems. Participants will be challenged to reconsider STEM equity not as providing identical experiences in every community, but as ensuring that all learners have meaningful opportunities to engage, succeed, and envision themselves within STEM. Presenter(s): Joseph Isaac Register

Data are transforming nearly every aspect of higher education, scientific discovery, healthcare, and workforce development. Yet many educators, researchers, and institutional leaders have had little formal preparation in applying data science to their teaching, scholarship, program evaluation, or strategic decision-making. Data to Impact is a four-part professional development series designed to build practical data science capacity among faculty, researchers, administrators, and education leaders. Rather than focusing solely on programming or advanced analytics, the series demonstrates how data science can become a powerful tool for solving real-world problems, strengthening research, improving student outcomes, informing institutional decisions, and increasing competitiveness for grants and partnerships. Through interactive webinars, participants will progress from foundational concepts to real-world applications in STEM, education, research administration, and institutional leadership. By the end of the series, participants will leave with practical tools, new perspectives and an action plan for applying data science within their own disciplines and organizations. Presenter(s): Amaka Nwankwo Register

Outcomes and Evaluation in Research Proposals and Projects provides information on common types of outcomes in research, effective approaches to evaluation of outcomes, and distinguishing differences between research and evaluation. This webinar will assist researchers in developing rigorous, evidence-based plans for assessing clear, specific, measurable outcomes to determine the extent to which project goals are achieved. This webinar is part of the series: Capacity Building for Applied STEM Education and Behavioral Sciences Research. Presenter(s): Toni Dancstep, Toya Frank, Naomi Hall-Byers, and Tori Smith Register

Data are transforming nearly every aspect of higher education, scientific discovery, healthcare, and workforce development. Yet many educators, researchers, and institutional leaders have had little formal preparation in applying data science to their teaching, scholarship, program evaluation, or strategic decision-making. Data to Impact is a four-part professional development series designed to build practical data science capacity among faculty, researchers, administrators, and education leaders. Rather than focusing solely on programming or advanced analytics, the series demonstrates how data science can become a powerful tool for solving real-world problems, strengthening research, improving student outcomes, informing institutional decisions, and increasing competitiveness for grants and partnerships. Through interactive webinars, participants will progress from foundational concepts to real-world applications in STEM, education, research administration and institutional leadership. By the end of the series, participants will leave with practical tools, new perspectives and an action plan for applying data science within their own disciplines and organizations. Presenter(s): Amaka Nwankwo Register

Finding Non-federal Funding Opportunities that Align with Your Research Agenda explores strategies for identifying and securing non-federal funding opportunities that align with your research agenda in an increasingly complex and rapidly changing federal funding landscape. The presentation will highlight alternative pathways such as philanthropic foundations, state-level agencies, nonprofits, and mission-driven organizations. Participants will learn practical approaches for matching their research interests with funder priorities while maintaining the integrity and impact of their work. The session will also include tips for building sustainable funding pipelines and positioning research for broader community and institutional support. This webinar is part of the series: Capacity Building for Applied STEM Education and Behavioral Sciences Research. Presenter(s): Toni Dancstep, Toya Frank, Naomi Hall-Byers, and Tori Smith. Register

Following a previous webinar on the basics of using the NSF resources for award management, this webinar delves into other post-award requirements and considerations addressed in Part II of the PAPPG including recipient standards and award disputes. This webinar is part of a series of webinars addressing how to navigate resources available from NSF from proposal preparation to awards management. Presenter (s): Sharmini Pitter Boghos and Jennifer Riehl Register

Data are transforming nearly every aspect of higher education, scientific discovery, healthcare, and workforce development. Yet many educators, researchers, and institutional leaders have had little formal preparation in applying data science to their teaching, scholarship, program evaluation, or strategic decision-making. Data to Impact is a four-part professional development series designed to build practical data science capacity among faculty, researchers, administrators, and education leaders. Rather than focusing solely on programming or advanced analytics, the series demonstrates how data science can become a powerful tool for solving real-world problems, strengthening research, improving student outcomes, informing institutional decisions, and increasing competitiveness for grants and partnerships. Through interactive webinars, participants will progress from foundational concepts to real-world applications in STEM, education, research administration, and institutional leadership. By the end of the series, participants will leave with practical tools, new perspectives and an action plan for applying data science within their own disciplines and organizations. Presenter(s): Amaka Nwankwo Register

NSF’s Data Management Sharing Plan Tool Demonstration: In complementation to the two-part “Developing supplementary proposal documents” workshop hosted by Drs. Carrie Hall and Christopher Atchison, this webinar focuses on the importance of a well thought out Data and Management Sharing Plan. In this session we will demonstrate how to use the new Data Management and Sharing Plan tool and participants will be given the option to follow along and build their own Data Management and Sharing Plan. Pre-session preparation instructions will be sent to all registrants approximately one week before the meeting. Presenter(s): Jennifer Riehl and Sharmini Pitter Boghos Register

Funding opportunities for Research Infrastructure Building explores funding opportunities that help institutions build the research infrastructure necessary to advance research and education goals. This webinar will include aspects of research infrastructure such as IRB review, data collection and analysis platforms that work across multiple institutions, and data storage approaches, as well as physical infrastructure, given that many funding opportunities limit or disallow equipment expenditures. Presenters will share opportunities and lessons learned to enhance research capacity through infrastructure. This webinar is part of the series: Capacity Building for Applied STEM Education and Behavioral Sciences Research. Presenter(s): Toni Dancstep, Toya Frank, Naomi Hall-Byers, and Tori Smith. Register

Series Recap and Discussion: Writing a Compelling Research Proposal for Funding Join us for the culminating session of the Capacity Building for Applied STEM Education & Behavioral Sciences Research series. This interactive session will provide a brief recap of the initial guiding webinar from the series—Writing a Compelling Research Proposal for Funding—followed by facilitated breakout rooms to answer your most urgent questions and delve into discussion to learn together. Breakout groups will respond to participants' interests, focusing on topics for improving researching capacity and proposals by: Leveraging collaborations; Harnessing literature; Aligning research questions and methods; Establishing outcomes and evaluation; and/or Finding funding opportunities. Presenter(s): Toni Dancstep, Toya Frank, Naomi Hall-Byers, and Tori Smith Register