A Journey toward Obtaining Our First NSF S-STEM (Scholarship) Grant

Computer science Ph.D. training provides numerous opportunities to prepare doctoral graduates to write research grant proposals. However, writing scholarship grant proposals is a very different process, and a newcomer might go through many attempts before obtaining their first awarded grant. This paper documents our four proposal submissions prior to acquiring our first NSF S-STEM grant for the Department of Computer Science at Florida State University. This paper also highlights major issues to consider when writing such proposals. We hope that future newcomers will be able to avoid some of the pitfalls we encountered in obtaining scholarship grants of a similar nature