21 November 2023
We are happy to announce that the NASA Science Mission Directorate (SMD) Bridge Program Community Workshop Report is now publicly available on our website at this link. The SMD Bridge Program team is committed to co-creating this program with the you, the community. Back in October of 2022, a fantastic group of community leaders organized and led a 5-day virtual workshop to find out what the community needs and wants from a bridge program with NASA’s Science Mission Directorate. Thanks to the hard work from the authors and editors of this report, we can now showcase all the discussions and key takeaways from last year’s workshop.
This report is full of information for us here on the Bridge Program Team, and valuable information for you, the proposers, and participants. The appendices are a great place to go for resources on mentoring and evidence-based program design. To quote the report:
“This informational report is the product of multiple meetings of a diverse set of working groups, many representing communities that have traditionally not engaged with NASA. These groups came together during the week-long NASA SMD Bridge Program Workshop, held in October 2022, and provided multiple opportunities for community input with the purpose of co-creating NASA’s Science Mission Directorate Bridge Program, a new initiative aimed at increasing participation in NASA SMD activities. This report is informed by those discussions and intended to guide NASA in shaping a Notice of Funding Opportunity (NOFO) that broadens the participation of students, faculty, and institutions in Science Technology Engineering and Math (STEM) experiences available within NASA. The purpose of this report is not to address the many issues faced by under resourced communities but to lay a foundation for NASA to develop a program in which underserved students, faculty, and institutions can receive funding, work with NASA, and use their local expertise to address these issues.”
The SMD Bridge Program team is already acting on some of the main workshop themes, for example, by offering the Bridge Program Seed Funding (BPSF) Opportunity, which is Appendix F.23 in ROSES-2023. This “no fixed due date” program will accept proposals up through March 29, 2024. We hope that the availability of the NASA Science Mission Directorate (SMD) Bridge Program Community Workshop Report will encourage many new proposals to the Bridge Program, either for seed funding, or for additional opportunities in ROSES-2024. We would also like to highlight a white paper from the early career perspectives group. A big thank you to all the participants from the workshop, and all of the authors who made this report happen.