Dear Colleague Letter for NSF-wide Career-Life Balance
Posted on 30 Nov 2020 1:11 PM

A new Dear Colleague Letter for NSF-wide Career-Life Balance (CLB) supplements is available here.

There are two key changes this year compared to prior editions that restricted this opportunity to only CAREER awardees.  The changes provide: 

 1) an increase in the amount and duration of salary support that may be requested; and 

 2) an extension of the opportunity to Principal Investigators (PIs) and co-PIs of all active NSF grant or cooperative agreements

If you’re interested, please read the DCL carefully and then contact your program officer.

Background

Instituted in 2012, NSF's Career-Life Balance (CLB) initiative is an agency-wide approach to help attract, retain, and advance graduate students, postdoctoral researchers, and other researchers in STEM fields. This effort aims to help reduce the rate at which early-career researchers depart from the STEM workforce.

With this Dear Colleague Letter (DCL), NSF draws attention to the opportunity for supplemental funding to help researchers, who are confronted with a short-term increase in dependent care responsibilities, ensure that the research activities supported by an NSF award can continue. Historical information about CLB may be found on the Foundation's website.