Flexible Response: Supporting Science through the Pandemic
(This excerpt from RCSA’s 2022 Annual Report, published August 3, 2023, has been updated to include awards made in late 2023 in the final year of the Scialog: Mitigating Zoonotic Threats initiative.)
As the COVID-19 pandemic began, RCSA actively listened to the needs and concerns of our community of scientists, and swiftly developed a suite of pandemic responses. Our ability to adapt enabled us to redeploy funds freed up by the cancellation of in-person events, provided crucial financial support to early career scientists facing career disruptions, and kept program participants engaged with their research and with each other. Now, as the world navigates toward a “new normal,” RCSA reflects on our approaches, our challenges, and the impact of our response.
COVID-19 Initiative: Detecting and Mitigating Epidemics
April 2020
This Scialog-style virtual workshop brought together 109 Cottrell Scholars, past Scialog Fellows, and Scialog Facilitators from the physical sciences to develop research projects on virus detection and characterization that could be used during this or future pandemics. Expedited proposal submission and review enabled RCSA to make awards in less than five weeks. Lessons learned helped refine the model for future virtual convenings.
Awards: 13 awards of $55,000
Outcomes: The initiative kept faculty active and resulted in at least 27 publications (several high-profile in the scientific literature as well as popular media), three patents, and significant follow-up funding for several teams.
Virtual Cottrell Scholar Convenings
2020 and 2021
RCSA held four virtual meetings during the pandemic to keep the Cottrell Scholar community engaged through dialogue and problem-solving. As before the pandemic, innovative ideas for collaborative projects emerged from these discussions. RCSA funded three Cottrell Scholar Collaborative projects in 2020, and three in 2021.
• A Cottrell Scholar Conversation in May 2020 on the topic of “Reopening Research Laboratories and Programs” was attended by 100 Cottrell Scholars, including established faculty and members of the new class of 2020.
• To respond to the rapid shift from in-person to online courses for the upcoming fall term, the virtual CS Conference in July 2020, “Challenges and Opportunities with Online Education,” engaged 153 attendees in discussions about virtual lectures and labs, equity, and the assessment of teaching and learning objectives.
• A Cottrell Scholar Conversation on online education in September 2020 was attended by 53 teacher-scholars concerned about a host of challenges with online or hybrid models of education, including student stress and accessibility. They shared tips and tools they found effective.
• The virtual 2021 CS Conference, “Reimagining Higher Education,” engaged 154 attendees in discussions designed to help convert lessons of the pandemic into sustainable, positive change in classrooms, labs, and across campuses. Participants shared strategies for fighting inequities in academia and pedagogical practices to continue in a post-pandemic world to improve undergraduate and graduate education and the development of postdocs.
Awards: 6 awards of $25,000
Outcomes: Despite Zoom fatigue and faculty burnout as the pandemic continued, the Cottrell Scholar community remained strong. Open dialogue and sharing of challenges faced by teacher-scholars from different institutions and at different points in their careers generated important ideas for RCSA and partner philanthropies, greatly informing RCSA’s continued pandemic response.
Cottrell Postdoctoral Fellowships
2020-21 and 2021-22
The sudden closure of faculty searches in response to the pandemic disrupted the plans of many senior postdoctoral fellows who intended to interview for faculty positions in 2020-21 or 2021-22. RCSA offered Cottrell Scholars the opportunity to apply for funding to support an additional postdoctoral year for fellows. Seven of these awards were made possible by two grants from the National Science Foundation, which heard of our effort and encouraged RCSA to expand the initiative. Importantly, awards required that the fellows be provided with significant teaching opportunities to prepare them for a major responsibility as faculty; typically, postdoctoral support focuses entirely on research, and precludes training in pedagogy.
Awards: 27 awards of up to $75,000
Outcomes: Recipients reported the fellowships provided a much-needed year of additional financial support, teaching opportunities, and research experience that lent a competitive advantage to their later searches for academic positions. All participating postdoctoral fellows stayed in STEM, with 16 securing faculty positions and three finding full-time industrial jobs. Eight are still postdoctoral fellows with plans to interview in fall 2023.
Cottrell Instrumentation Supplements
2020-21
Many Cottrell Scholars at primarily undergraduate institutions rely on shared instrumentation facilities for research, teaching labs, and lecture demonstrations. When colleges experienced a rapid decline in revenue due to campus shutdowns, their support to maintain or upgrade these essential facilities was at risk. RCSA offered Cottrell Scholars partial support for the cost of new or upgraded “priority” instrumentation, with an institutional match required for at least half of the cost.
Awards: 11 awards of up to $20,000
Outcomes: Recipients reported significant positive impact on both teaching and research as new instrumentation encouraged collaborations and yielded quality data for publications and grants. Recipients used new or modernized instrumentation to establish seven new techniques.
Cottrell Postbaccalaureate Awards
2021-22 and 2022-23
Many Cottrell Scholars conduct research with undergraduates and rely on more senior students to train new members of the group. PUI laboratory closures during the pandemic resulted in a disruption of research programs and a loss of research opportunities for these students. To help their research programs recover, RCSA offered Cottrell Scholars awards to support undergraduate seniors working under their supervision for a year after graduation.
Awards: 16 awards of $50,000
Outcomes: These awards enhanced the research programs of the Cottrell Scholars and increased the opportunities of postbacs to be admitted to graduate school or secure science jobs. Their research resulted in two published articles and various manuscripts in preparation, and helped recipients renew or secure new grants. At least six 2022 Postbac Fellows were accepted into graduate programs starting in Fall 2023. Implementation challenges RCSA experienced with this award have been used to design a targeted PUI track for Cottrell SEED awards starting in 2024.
Scialog: Mitigating Zoonotic Threats
2021-23
Planning for this Scialog in partnership with the United States Department of Agriculture was well underway before the onset of the pandemic, but it proved to be eerily on point. The first meeting took place virtually after the pandemic began, so participation and research projects have been very much with COVID-19 in mind.
Awards: 70 awards of $50,000 in direct costs
Outcomes: Permitting and other delays led to a slow roll-out of many projects, most of which are still ongoing, but one team has received significant ongoing USDA support based on their preliminary data. Collaboration with a new network of academic scientists has been described as “career-transforming” for USDA researchers.
Lessons Learned
While RCSA is always looking for ways to improve the work of the foundation, the COVID-19 pandemic offered us a chance to experiment with new approaches and learn ways to improve current initiatives. Listening to our stakeholders allowed us to target support in very specific ways that had a strong and lasting impact for grantees, and while the pandemic disrupted RCSA’s ability to hold in-person meetings, it presented an opportunity to experiment with virtual meetings, to understand what about face-to-face events is important, and to bring in new practices that make in-person meetings more effective.
