NOAA’s Office of Education is seeking reviewers for applications for Priority 1 of the 2020 Environmental Literacy Program grants competition titled, “Environmental Literacy Grants: Supporting the education of K-12 students and the public for community resilience”.  The Office seeks reviewers with a broad range of expertise related to K-12 science education, informal science education, engaging underserved audiences, civic engagement, citizen science, evaluation, community resilience, and/or public policy.

What a reviewer will do:

• Serve as a reviewer of pre-applications OR a reviewer of full applications. (Note: There may be a small number of people who serve as reviewers of both.)
• Read, write brief reviews of, and score applications that have been assigned to you.
• During the pre-application review, we anticipate assigning ~20 pre-applications per reviewer and we estimate that this will require approximately 25 hours of work over a ~4-week period.  (Pre-applications are brief, consisting of a title page and a 4-page narrative.) During the full application review, we anticipate assigning approximately 10 applications to you and we estimate your work will require ~40 hours over a 4-week period.
• Participate in a 90-minute teleconference with program officers who will give an overview on the review process, highlight important elements of the funding announcement, and answer any reviewer questions. Two teleconferences will be held during the week of December 16-20, 2019 (exact dates TBD).
• Reviewers of full applications will also participate in a 2-day virtual panel meeting during the week of May 4-8, 2020.

Time Frame

The review period for pre-applications will begin approximately December 16, 2019. Your written reviews and scores will be due by January 13, 2020. We may ask you to clarify your reviews between January 13-31, so you will need to be available during this period as well. NOTE: there will be no panel discussion for this pre-application review. 

The review period for full applications will begin approximately April 6, 2020. Your preliminary written reviews and scores will be due May 1, 2020. You will also be required to participate in a 2-day virtual panel meeting during the week of May 4-8, 2020. We may ask you to clarify your reviews between May 11-22, 2020. 

Why serve?

• Reviewers will gain insights into the field of resilience education.
• Reviewers gain insights into the characteristics of highly competitive grant applications.
• Reviewers gain an understanding of how a federal grants review process works.
• Serving as a reviewer for a federal grants program is an important way the government solicits input from the community. This input informs investment decisions for the current year and future priorities.

If you are interested in serving as a reviewer, please complete our online form by November 27, 2019.  If you are unable to upload your resume on the form, please email it to oed.grants@noaa.gov. If you have any questions or comments, email the NOAA Environmental Literacy Program grants team at oed.grants@noaa.gov.

Feel free to send this request to others with relevant expertise. Thank you for considering this request.