Common CAREER proposal mistakes

If you are aiming to submit a CAREER award for the upcoming July 2026 deadline, then this semester you should be working on preliminary data, securing research collaborations and partnerships for your broader outreach/education activities, securing support commitments from your institution, and lining up your writing buddies and friendly reviewers (especially if you’re at an institution like mine with little to no grant writing support).

Pay close attention to the two solicitation-specific criteria: the departmental letter of support, and the integration of research and education.

Mistake # 1: A lukewarm letter of support. The language in the solicitation is clear: “NSF encourages organizations to value and reward the integration of research and education and the effective mentoring of its early-career faculty in their department.” Not only is the CAREER award one of the most prestigious awards available to early-career faculty, but it’s also designed to support career development in a way regular awards are not. This “requires close collaboration between the PI and their organization”. A lukewarm letter might indicate the institution isn’t designed to support early-career faculty in a meaningful way and there is a risk the PI “fails to launch” due to inadequate departmental/institutional support. If NSF is investing half a million dollars or more in a single PI, there needs to be some clear indications the department is eager to support the PI. Solution: make sure you are looking at other letter examples and having early conversations with your chair. Draft your own letter and let your chair modify it, you’ll be the one to upload it. Don’t be afraid to ask what departmental support the chair is in a position to provide. Remember, a grant this size brings in non-trivial indirect costs (and prestige), and they need to work for it too! Having specifics in writing can also help down the road, when your chair asks something of you that goes against something that was clearly outlined in the letter.

Mistake # 2: Poor integration of research and education. The integration of research and education is what makes CAREER awards so special and so powerful. Integrating research and education allows you to scale your work and impact in a way that propels you to become a true teacher-scholar. It sets you up for flying through tenure, building a sustainable career, and reaching a larger audience. That’s why the integration of research and education is “a primary objective of the CAREER award”. A boilerplate approach to meet this criteria is to include the results of the research in a CURE. But you’re more creative than that. Solution: Activities that play to the your strengths, that scale some existing program in new ways or to new audiences, or position you as the perfect person in the perfect place for doing X, will make your proposal stand out.

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