Hi Steven,

I skimmed through your proposal and have a couple comments. I don't have time to read the whole thing (nor am I obligated to), but I've reviewed a lot grant applications in this field, and here are some things that that struck me immediately about your application:

1. I'm confused about the name. Are you affiliated with NASA? Is NASA involved in this idea? If not, you'll need to pull NASA out of the title of the academy. If your idea has a formal buy-in from NASA, you need to say so, up front. No way can you use NASA's name without formal buy-in from them.

For example, NASA participation your title could be inferred as meaning that program graduates will have a formal connection to NASA that may not exist. Ouch!

2. Your overview lacks focus. An overview needs to get to the point, and fast. Specifics:

* Get rid of the quotes; they're distracting.

* State the problem succinctly, and then state your solution succinctly. A reviewer needs to know exactly what you want to do and how you're going to do it. You also need to show how you'll measure success or failure at various steps along the way.

* Clay is right about running a pilot project first. It's extremely unlikely (really, impossible) that you'd be given funds to start academies at 150 research universities without the existence of even one now.

* Do you have letters of support from high-level people and department heads at the University of Oregon? If not, you need them. No buy-in from the university is a funding-killer. This alone could be a barrier to funding. You need to have all kinds of commitments from the university to make this project work.

* The same need for letters applies to local high schools that will be involved. And NASA, if it's involved.

3. You wrote:

"NAPS will put an enormous academic and emotional strain on its NASA Scholars, especially during the junior year..."

Okay, so why would I put my child through this? As a parent, I read this and think "Forget it; I don't want to kill my teenager's love of learning by piling too much pressure on him."

Besides, how can people think creatively to solve problems when high stress is the norm? The answer is that they can't. Just because excessive work is common in this country doesn't make it a good idea.

4. How will you recruit, specifically? How will you evaluate your program, specifically? etc.

5. You obviously put a lot of thought into your courses; this is a strength. The entire application needs that same level of detailed thought.

6. I haven't read the request for applications/RFA you're responding to, so I don't know how carefully you've addressed all the points it lays out. So I'll just make a general statement: you need to address everything in the RFA, specifically.

7. I agree with Clay about the lack of biology being a weakness (unless you assume that we're the only planet in the universe that's ever been home to a living thing). NASA has huge efforts underway in biology. Why exclude this area? The physical sciences don't stand apart from biology. Plus, you exclude everyone who's interested in the subject right from the start, which narrows your pool of potential students.

Originally Posted by clay
I will agree with you that high school level, and, heck, even some graduate level biology (depending on one's concentration) is "easy"...

I'm going to disagree very strongly here. I guess it's possible to see Biology as being easy because biologists were once able to rely heavily on observation, and because introductory classes (unfortunately) focus so much on memorization. However, this approach once worked because we knew so little about the subject, rather than because it's easy. In other words, we were so ignorant, we had no choice about how to approach the subject.

Humans have only scratched the surface of this field. In the last 50 years or so, we've finally gained knowledge and developed technologies that allow us to see how complex biology actually is.

Biology is built on top of mathematics, physics, and chemistry. No one truly appreciated this idea even a hundred years ago. You need only start looking up questions in the field and this complexity rears up very quickly (Try, "What causes the sporadic form of Lou Gehrig's disease/ALS?").

This is actually a huge argument for starting biology education when students are young.

Just my 2c.

Val