T-RISE Seed Grants

Proposal Submission

Proposals must be submitted via NIU’s InfoReady portal.

• NIU users should log in to InfoReady via single sign-on using the “NIU Login” button on the NIU InfoReady home page.
• Support documents and videos for applicants are available via the “Help” link on the NIU InfoReady webpage.
• For technical assistance with the InfoReady submission process, send an email to erahelp@niu.edu and reference "Research and Artistry 2023-2024” in the subject line.

The submission process is completely electronic. Proposals submitted by any method other than the InfoReady portal will not be accepted.

Project Summary

Provide a summary of the project not exceeding 1,600 characters. This character limit is built into the InfoReady application form and will be enforced. You may develop your summary outside of the portal and paste it into the text field.

The summary should be a self-contained description of the activities that will be completed if the proposal is funded. The summary should include a statement of objectives, a description of the methods that will be employed and/or activities that will take place, and an explanation of how the project will impact the applicant, the University, the discipline, and society.

Proposal Narrative

The proposal narrative should communicate all aspects of the research plan. Your team should develop your proposal narrative outside of InfoReady and upload it to your application as an attachment. The proposal narrative (excluding references cited and glossary) is limited to five single-spaced pages with one-inch margins in all directions and font size no smaller than 11 points. Please work within this limit to determine the appropriate length for each section below based on the content required for your specific proposal. Proposals that exceed this overall page limit will not fare well during review at best, and at worst may be returned without review.

The required sections of the proposal narrative are as follows:

• T-RISE grant justification: Describe how the project is likely to lead to external funding. This section may include:
  • How specifically the project will strengthen an extramural proposal? What activities will the project fund that is necessary to secure external funding (e.g., proof of concept, securing pilot data, establishing collaborative relationships, project planning, etc.).?
  • Information on previous attempts to secure external funding, including whether reviews of previously submitted external proposals justify the need for the proposed activities and/or internal funding in support of a stronger application.
  • Information on specific plans to apply for external funding in the future, including sponsors that may fund the work, a timeline for pursuing extramural funding, and other details.
• Project goals:
  • This section should clearly state the project goals and objectives (hypotheses to be tested, questions to be answered, concepts to be explored, and/or products that will result from the project) and how those relate to prior work in the field by the project team members.
  • Describe how the proposed project aligns with one of the three T-RISE themes: Science of STEM Learning, Equity in STEM, or Pedagogical Innovation in STEM.
• Project methods:
  • Define the methods that will be used and activities that will be conducted to achieve the project goals and to evaluate project impacts, irrespective of whether the fields involved are artistic, scientific, or humanistic.
  • Please include a justification and explanation of sample sizes, where applicable.
• PI and co-PI qualifications and career enhancement:
  • Each project must include at least one PI from at least two colleges (e.g., faculty A from CLAS and faculty B from CHHS).
  • Provide a short description of how each team member will contribute to this project.
  • The description should clarify how the proposed work builds on successful work already carried out by members of the project team. If the proposed work is in a new area, the proposal should explain the motivation for the change in direction and plans to ensure success.
  • Include a work plan to ensure the team will have the time and opportunity to meet proposed project goals given that research collaborations across disciplinary boundaries can be time-consuming.
• Student involvement (optional):
  • Involvement of students in T-RISE seed grants is optional. If students are involved, include a description of how you will engage students in data collection and analysis.

References Cited

Provide a list of references cited in the proposal narrative or elsewhere in the application documents. Applicants may use the citation method most appropriate for their field, as long as the citation method is consistent throughout the application.

Budget and Justification

Provide an itemized budget request and detailed justification. You will download an Excel budget form from InfoReady, complete it offline, and upload the completed form to your application. You will have access to download the form once you start your application in InfoReady.

The total budget requested may not exceed $15,000 – including summer salary. Funds may not be spent before the award start date. Funds may not be used for activities that occur before the award start date. Funding is limited to the following categories:

• Faculty summer salary of up to $5,000 per faculty member. Faculty may only request summer salary on one proposal up to this limit, even if they participate in more than one proposal. The project can have a maximum of five investigators. In general, salary should indicate the relative level of contribution unless otherwise described in the proposal (e.g., $2500 for one week of work versus $5,000 for two weeks of work).
• Graduate or Undergraduate assistant salary.
• Supplies (e.g., software subscriptions, consumables).
• Fees for use of established NIU service centers (i.e., RMS). More information is available on these service centers.
• Contractual services (e.g., transcription, etc.). Note that payment for contractual services to an external organization may only be requested if the service is not available via NIU.
• Participant payments.

Budget items other than those listed above are not allowed. Specifically, the following requests are unallowable:

• Travel.
• Non-faculty collaborators – Staff on 12-month salaries are not eligible for additional pay for this funding opportunity.
• Costs incurred for activities taking place before the award start date.
• Faculty summer salary exceeding $5,000 per faculty member, and/or requested in multiple proposals.
• Any costs (travel, lodging, meals, registration, or any other cost) in support of conference attendance, including for presentation of project results.
• Costs of collaboration with external entities: Funding to external entities is limited to contractual payments to another organization for services not available at NIU (e.g., transcription, lab analyses that cannot be conducted at NIU, access to facilities required but not available at NIU, etc.). Direct payments to individuals are not allowed, nor are consortium arrangements with another organization to conduct a portion of the work (i.e., a sub-award).

It is not necessary to include fringe benefit costs, student tuition, or facilities and administrative costs in the T-RISE Seed Grant budget. These costs are requested in budgets of externally funded grants and contracts to recover institutional costs associated with those projects. Because T-RISE is an intramurally funded program, recovery of these institutional costs is not applicable.

You must provide a detailed budget justification within the budget form. Each budget line has a "description" column; please use that space to justify each item requested. Additional space is available at the end of the budget to provide further justification if needed. The justification should directly tie the budget request to the work plan of the proposed project, and must include the following information:

• Why each item requested in the budget is required to complete the project
• How each item requested will support the proposed project
• The cost basis for and total cost of each item requested, in dollars (e.g., “X widgets x $Y per widget = $Z total”; “X amount of time x $Y per time unit = $Z total salary/wage request”)

Budgets that are not adequately justified will not be awarded.

Award funds must be expended between July 1, 2024, and June 30, 2025. Funds may not be spent before or for activities occurring before the award start date. Extensions of the award end date must be approved by the T-RISE Executive Board and are not automatic or guaranteed. Such approval must be requested well before the award end date. If approved, extensions will be awarded as “no cost”, meaning no additional funding will be provided and the applicant must have funds remaining to complete the project during the extended award period.

Other supporting documentation (required for the lead PI and all co-PIs, where applicable)

Required Additional Documentation

• Extramural funding (past three years): Provide a list of all extramural proposals submitted during the last three years (funded, unfunded and pending). Please retrieve the list from the InfoEd database by accessing the standard reports. This document is required. If you have never applied for external funding, you must upload a document stating as much to meet the requirement. Do not include intramural funding activity in this list. Describe any additional efforts you have made to develop such proposal(s) or to identify appropriate external funding sources, if applicable.
• Abbreviated CV of no more than five pages. The emphasis should be on publications and professional activities (e.g., books, book chapters, proceedings, refereed articles, monographs, presentations, exhibits, performances, inventions, etc.) during the last five years. This document is required.

Optional Additional Documentation

• Internal Funding History: A list or description of internal funding support you have requested or been awarded to support the proposed project.
• Letters of Collaboration: If external collaborators are involved, you may provide letters of collaboration confirming their intention to participate. Such letters should be brief and to the point and should document the commitment to collaborate rather than describing qualitative support for the project. Basic letters of support (letters that praise the project idea or PI(s)) are not allowed and will not be reviewed or considered.

Review Criteria

2024 T-RiseFunded Projects

In May 2024, T-RISE hosted a two-day workshop focused on proposal writing. The workshop provided participants with dedicated time and resources to develop their seed grant proposals, along with offering feedback from peers on their drafts. As a result of this workshop, T-RISE received nine proposals and awarded three seed grants. We are pleased to present summaries of the projects funded by these grants.

Awards

Innovative STEM Education Through ACCENT

This project focuses on developing an innovative educational tool, ACCENT (Advanced Computing and Communication Engineering Notebooks for Teaching), designed to guide students in STEM fields to systematically solve problems using computational techniques. The Engineering Notebook is built on the open-source Jupyter Notebook platform, enabling interactive and literate computing with key problem-solving features such as hand-calculation rendering, automatic unit and dimension checking, automatic grading and real-time collaboration. The project is a collaborative effort across the fields of mathematics, engineering and computer science. Key functions, including symbolic math calculations, hand-calculation rendering and unit conversion, have already been successfully integrated into the Engineering Notebook. Currently, work is underway to implement additional features such as automatic grading and the conversion of handwritten equations to LaTeX form. We aim to apply the Engineering Notebook in an engineering course in spring 2025 to evaluate its effectiveness in improving students' communication, organization and problem-solving and identify areas for further improvement.

Principal investigator (PI): Kyu Taek Cho, Mechanical Engineering (College of Engineering and Engineering Technology)

Co-PIs: Rachel Rupnow, Department of Mathematical Sciences (College of Liberal Arts and Sciences) and David Koop, Department of Computer Science (College of Liberal Arts and Sciences)

Culturally Relevant Opportunities for STEM Students Through Calculus

The Culturally Relevant Opportunities for STEM Students through Calculus (CROSS-Calc) project aims to make calculus more engaging by connecting it to students' academic goals. A team of STEM faculty will create real-world problems aligned with key calculus learning objectives, which will be used in a pilot course in spring 2025.

The project allows students to explore modern calculus applications related to their fields of study. Our goals are to

• Make calculus more relevant
• Improve students' persistence and performance in STEM programs
• Foster a stronger sense of belonging in STEM fields.

This semester, we will design a curriculum with these goals in mind and develop an experimental framework for the pilot. After the pilot, we will evaluate its impact on students' attitudes, academic performance, and persistence, making adjustments for full implementation the following year.

We have a dedicated team passionate about enhancing student learning. Special thanks to co-PIs Ricela Feliciano-Semidei and Christine Nguyen, faculty support from Razak Dwomoh, and STEM faculty: Niechen Chen, Anna Klis, Farzin Ferdowsi, Benedito Fonseca, David Koop, Mel Lenczewski, Larry Lurio, Bill Martin, Nick Pohlman, Alan Polansky, Lee Sunderlein and Markjoe Uba.

Principal investigator (PI): Kevin Palencia, Mathematical Sciences (College of Liberal Arts and Sciences)

Co-PIs: Ricela Feliciano-Semidei, Mathematical Sciences (College of Liberal Arts and Sciences) and Christine Nguyen, Industrial and Systems Engineering (College of Engineering and Engineering Technology)

Expanding Research Components of a STEAM-Focused College Bridge Program for High School Students with Disabilities

This project aims to better understand the experiences of college freshmen with disabilities who participated in the Huskies BELONG high school-to-college transition program. The focus is on improving research components for Huskies BELONG (HB). Shupei Yuan, Ph.D. and I, who share research interests in underrepresented populations in STEAM fields, have collaborated to enhance the project's research methods.

We have developed strategic partnerships and created qualitative and quantitative tools based on a thorough literature review. With IRB approval, we will begin participant recruitment by mid-September 2024 and collect pilot data at the end of the fall 2024 and spring 2025 semesters. An NIU ETRA graduate student intern has joined the team to assist with data collection and analysis.

Data will be gathered through electronic surveys and Zoom interviews starting by December 2024 and again at the end of the participants' freshman year in May 2025. Analysis will occur during the winter and spring of 2025. Findings from the study will inform a proposal for NSF funding, planned for submission in summer or fall 2025.

Principal investigator (PI): Bryan Dallas, School of Interdisciplinary Health Profession (College of Health and Human Sciences)

Co-PI: Shupei Yuan, Department of Communication (College of Liberal Arts and Sciences)

Towards Personalized Interventions: Eye Tracking and EEG Analysis in STEM Education for Young Autism Spectrum Disorder Learners

Our aim is to identify unique eye movement and brain activity patterns in children with Autism Spectrum Disorder (ASD) compared to those without ASD. We will examine different teaching scenarios for STEM-related tasks, such as number-matching and block-stacking activities. By analyzing eye-tracking and brain data, we hope to identify effective teaching methodologies that can provide valuable insights for instructors, researchers, and parents, ultimately enhancing educational strategies for children with ASD. I was fortunate to be collaborating with Jeff Chan from Special Education, who brings autism expertise, and Kyu Taek Cho from Mechanical Engineering, whose background in signal processing and machine learning enriches our multidisciplinary approach.

We are currently preparing the IRB submission and refining the experimental design to ensure a comfortable and minimally intrusive experience for young participants. Our equipment has been recently upgraded, supported by this grant, to include eye-tracking and EEG technologies. Internal pilot studies are planned soon to confirm that our data collection processes are ready for full implementation. Our goal is to collect data from a total of 20 children—10 with ASD and 10 in a control group, under varying teaching conditions, specifically during number-matching and block-stacking tasks using machine learning, we aim to identify key measures that differentiate the two groups, offering insights into how teaching methods may be optimized for children with ASD.

Principal investigator (PI): Jaejin Hwang, Industrial and Systems Engineering (College of Engineering and Engineering Technology)

Co-PIs: Kyu Taek Cho, Mechanical Engineering (College of Engineering and Engineering Technology); Jeff Chan, Special Education (College of Education)

Investigating The Effects of a Consistent Mindfulness Practice on Curiosity In Students In STEM Courses At NIU

We are developing and testing an eight-week mindfulness program for NIU students in both STEM and non-STEM undergraduate courses. Faculty will lead the intervention group, while a control group will only complete surveys. We aim to evaluate the impact of consistent mindfulness practice using validated surveys administered three times during the eight weeks. We will measure mindfulness (mindful attention), curiosity (mindful attitude), and the frequency of mindfulness activities. Additionally, we will explore faculty experiences leading these mindfulness practices. Questions include whether faculty observed any changes in student behavior, which activities were effective and their plans for future implementation.

Our interdisciplinary team, united by a shared interest in mindfulness, brings diverse perspectives from different disciplines, strengthening our approach to this research. Through collaboration, we have benefited from each other’s expertise and learned about the unique aspects of each discipline, enriching our holistic approach to problem-solving. With funding secured, we are finalizing the intervention, which will launch in spring 2025. We are currently recruiting faculty from STEM and non-STEM courses to implement a brief mindfulness practice twice weekly over eight weeks. Following the intervention, we will collect pre-, intermediate, and post-test data from both the control and experimental groups and conduct focus groups to gather insights on the faculty experience. Ultimately, we plan to seek larger grants to further investigate mindfulness in academic settings.

Principal investigator (PI): Lynn Herrmann, Public Health (College of Health and Human Sciences)

Co-PIs: Shanthi Muthuswamy, Engineering Technology (College of Engineering and Engineering Technology); Jennifer Gray, Public Health (College of Health and Human Sciences); Pallavi Singh, Biological Sciences (College of Liberal Arts and Sciences)