The Institute of Education Sciences (IES) has announced the FY 2021 funding opportunities for Education Research and Special Education Research. See the Federal Register notice May 4, 2020 for Catalog of Federal Domestic Assistance (CFDA) numbers 84.305A, 84.305B, 84.305C, 84.305R, 84.324A, 84.324B, 84.324P, and 84.324R.

Letter of Intent due: June 11, 2020
Application package available: June 11, 2020
Deadline for transmittal of application: August 20, 2020

IES also has announced the FY 2021 funding opportunities for Statistical and Research Methodology in Education and Using Longitudinal Data to Support State Education Policymaking. See the Federal Register notice March 25, 2020 for CFDA numbers 84.305D and 84.305S

Letter of Intent due: May 28, 2020
Application package available: May 7, 2020
Deadline for transmittal of application: July 30, 2020

Please let Ana (anapuig@coe.ufl.edu) know if you are pursuing one of these RFPs so OER can provide support. You will be added to our queue on a first-come, first-served basis. We look forward to working with you. You can find the OER Capital Needs Form here: https://education.ufl.edu/educational-research/capital-needs-form

Please visit https://ies.ed.gov/funding/ for more details.

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As a reminder, the National Science Foundation’s (NSF) new Proposal & Award Policies and Procedures Guide (PAPPG) 20-1 has been released and will be effective for proposals submitted or due, and awards made, on or after June 1, 2020. As part of this new guidance all senior personnel biographical sketches and current and pending information must be in the NSF fillable pdf or generated from SciENcv. NSF would like your feedback on these formats prior to the June 1 requirement. Please provide your comments and questions to policy@nsf.gov.

NSF also recently recorded a webinar about the requirement to use an NSF-approved format for both the biographical sketch and current and pending support documents as part of proposals submitted to NSF.

To assist the UF community, the UF Division of Sponsored Programs has highlighted some of the key changes in PAPPG Summary of Changes. However, you are encouraged to review the by-chapter summary of changes provided in the Introduction section of the PAPPG. NSF has provided helpful resources related to these changes, which can be found on the DSP National Science Foundation Updates webpage.

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A potential consequence of the COVID-19 pandemic is the need for some students to reduce their enrollment status to less than full-time. This communication serves as notice to Principal Investigators of all active NSF S-STEM projects that your institution is authorized, effective immediately, to award scholarships to otherwise eligible S-STEM scholars as long as they are enrolled at least half-time, as defined by your institution.

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Due to the COVID-19 pandemic, the National Center for Education Statistics (NCES) will NOT be holding the 2020 STATS-DC Data Conference in July. NCES is reviewing alternative options and will send notification as soon as there is further information to share.

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Due to the increase in research in response to the COVID-19 pandemic, the National Library of Medicine at the National Institutes of Health (NIH) joined the White House and key industry and university leaders to release the COVID-19 Research Dataset (CORD-19). The dataset is a comprehensive library of coronavirus scholarly literature to date. Additionally, the NIH Office of Portfolio Analysis (OPA) has assembled a comprehensive listing of COVID‑19 publications. NIH also continues to add new resources to its COVID-19: Information for NIH Applicants and Recipients of NIH Funding webpage.

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U.S. Visa Services

U.S. visa services at embassies/consulates are closed until further notice. Some students have reported that when they checked the visa appointment calendar a starting schedule date pops up (e.g., May 7). This does not mean the embassy is accepting appointments. Instead, the embassy has blocked out all available appointments on the calendar to a particular day. When visa services resume, student visas will receive priority over other visas. Both I-20 (for F-1 visa) and DS-2019 (for J-1 visa) are eligible to be sent as an electronic copy during the pandemic crisis.

F-1 Students

Current F-1 students are allowed to finish online courses in the spring and continue in the summer and fall if UF is still fully online in fall. Transfer students or students who are changing their degree level and who are already in the U.S. can continue in the fall if UF is still online. For new summer admissions, the department needs to have them defer to the fall or, if online, they need to be pushed back to spring. UFIC will need to be notified for any information or academic changes made in order to update their I-20. Brand new international students for the fall will need to be deferred to spring if UF is fully online in fall or if visas are not issued in a timely manner due to U.S. embassies/consulates closures. New students can receive a partial deferment by allowing them to enroll in online courses for the fall and then to be physically present in the spring. The new international students can only enroll in online courses while remaining abroad without a visa.

J-1 Students

J-1 student visas can be switched to F-1 without leaving the country; however, the wait time is currently eight or more months. For J-1 students or for students who are currently in the U.S. and are changing their visa status to F-1, the usual process is to return to their home country and then re-enter under the new F-1 category. Please note that when they do this, they will lose their eligibility to be able to continue in the fall fully online and still be in the U.S. They will need to re-establish their physical presence and will be classified as a new student, which includes the spring deferment if UF is fully online in the fall. All J-1 visas holders who were scheduled to leave by May 31 will receive an automatic two-month extension plus their 30-day grace period.

Exchange Students Returning Home

Of the 200-250 exchange students at UF, 85% have returned home. Saudi Arabia has recalled its students to return home and is preparing an extradition process for its citizens. UFIC will be able to provide their required verification letter. According to the Chinese Embassy, there are approximately 400,000 students from China in the U.S. with 170,000 undergraduates and 30,000 middle school and high school students. The Chinese government has made chartered travel arrangements to have the secondary education students return to China first, followed by undergraduates and graduate students. The Chinese government has also sent out COVID-19 relief packages to its citizens in the U.S. that include masks and other items to keep them safe.

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UF’s new R4I@UF website is now live. The website is meant to be a resource for Rigorous Reproducible Responsible Research Integrity at UF https://research.ufl.edu/rcr/. The website has a variety resources on various research topics including Research Misconduct, Protection of Human Subjects, Data Management Practices and Rigor & Reproducibility. Additionally, every month you will find a new case study. These cases are meant to assist faculty, staff, and research teams in facilitating ongoing discussions about responsible research. As a reminder, if you have not already done so, please take the 2-minute survey and provide feedback on the RCR course offerings this summer. Please take the survey by clicking here.

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