Workshop: Increasing Reviewer Risk Tolerance Through Awareness

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This award assists the Civil, Mechanical, and Manufacturing Innovation Division at NSF in achieving NSF's mission "to promote the progress of science" by improving the capacity of the peer review process to recognize and appropriately evaluate proposals that advance discovery. The goals of this project are to evaluate methods based on rigorous social science research that (1) ameliorate bias and mitigate its effects in evaluating non-traditional scholars and scholarship by addressing cultural norms, group dynamics, and the efficacy of awareness training; and (2) contribute to a more robust agenda for rewarding innovation in engineering research. The project consists of two phases. Phase One (Key Concepts Phase) will address how cognitive bias, group thing, cultural norms, panel dynamics and leadership, the dynamics of conflict and conflict resolution, and academic psyches and peer evaluation pressures of academia impact merit review processes. Phase Two (Experiential Phase) will apply the Phase One learning outcomes to a mock panel review experience. The study will identify leading indicators of impact to inform future development of the peer review process.This award reflects NSF's statutory mission and has been deemed worthy of support through evaluation using the Foundation's intellectual merit and broader impacts review criteria.