$369K from NSF for Interdisciplinary Graduate Research Program in Coral Reef Science
Dr. Lauren Nadler (PI) and Dr. Tyler Cyronak (Co-PI) from Halmos College of Arts & Science’s Department of Marine & Environmental Sciences were recently awarded a three-year $369K NSF IRES grant titled “Systems-based transdisciplinary approaches to coral reef science and conservation.” This grant will support three graduate-level courses focused on collaboration and interdisciplinarity, features necessary to address the existing and emergent needs of the coral reef scientific and conservation communities (the overarching topic of this program). The courses will involve research and education activities both in the US and at remote field sites in Australia. Hear more about their funded project and the grant writing process below.
Tell us about your recent grant-funded project.
Coral reefs are important ecosystems, with 30% of species in the ocean using the coral reef at some point in their lives and nearby coastal communities receiving benefits such as protection from storm surge and access to resources. But when you take students to view a reef in Ft. Lauderdale, they see reefs degraded by climate change, overfishing, disease, and other factors. On the other hand, Australia, the field location for this program, has more pristine coral reefs that allow students to see how these ecosystems could be better managed.
Their funded graduate research program provides an opportunity to combine the research and teaching conducted by Drs. Nadler and Cyronak to allow students to directly experience unique coral reef environments, obtain hands-on research skills, and expand their scientific networks. The immersive experience will allow students to learn much more than they could in a university-based classroom or laboratory setting. Furthermore, research is a skill important for any career in science, including non-academic ones, so the program will support students interested in pursuing diverse career paths. Participating faculty in this program, from both the US and Australia, come from diverse sub-specialties and fields of coral reef science. This interdisciplinary approach is key for studying coral reefs, as these broad perspectives will help students tackle the large problems facing reefs globally.
The team plans to launch this program this winter 2022. However, if the borders are still closed at that time due to COVID-19, the program will instead begin next summer, and then run annually for three years.
Why did you pick this place and topic for a graduate student research experience?
Both Nadler and Cyronak did prior research work at Lizard Island in Australia—Nadler her PhD and Cyronak his postdoc—which they both felt was a unique and special place. They met scientists from around the world, at different stages in their career, and had access to a range of resources. Nadler still stays in contact with the friends she made then—exchanging job ads, reading each other’s manuscripts and grant applications, and helping each other advance in the field. Participating students in this program will find similar opportunities to expand their peer and professional networks, not only locally at NSU but also nationally and internationally.
Drs. Cyronak and Nadler both completed their PhDs in Australia and experienced a different training than what typical US-based graduate students do. Typically as a graduate student, especially in research, you are trained in a very narrow topic. Their planned international research experience will provide students with a broader training base and exposure to different disciplines, which they will ultimately be able to draw from to help address larger scientific and societal problems. This is, in fact, the way their field is moving: towards collaborative research. Their international training has also prompted them to bring other innovative ideas back to their department Chair to improve graduate training here at NSU.
Who will you be working with on this project?
Nadler and Cyronak will lead the project and work with Dr. Jennifer Reeves (Department of Education, NSU College of Education & School of Criminal Justice), who will help with assessing the teaching effectiveness of this course. Dr. Reeves will help them tailor the course to make sure they meet their desired learning outcomes. Given the uniqueness of this class, they also hope to publish educational data that can support others to use their program as a model to run similar initiatives. The team also has US collaborators at Boston University, University of North Carolina-Wilmington, and University of Miami in addition to eight researchers based in Australia.
How does this grant intersect with your work at NSU?
Students from NSU, other US universities, and Australia will participate together in this research experience. Participants will be both MS and PhD students and will take two 8-week courses (Winter I and Winter II). They will start with classwork to learn about coral reef and sociological reasons for the state of reefs, and prepare for their independent research projects, which will be monitored by both PIs when in the field. The Winter I term will culminate with the Australia-based field experience and data collection. Then in Winter II, after students return from Australia, they will analyze their data, write up their results, and give presentations on their findings
Both Cyronak and Nadler hope to integrate their individual coral reef research focuses into the program. While students will have some time for independent travel prior to the second term, they hope to secure some time to complete some of their own research too. Nadler still has experiments wrapping up from her tenure there five years ago. Currently, she has master’s students doing some behavioral analysis on video footage from the reef. Cyronak is hoping to continue the work on coral reef growth he conducted during a 2-year postdoctoral fellowship at Lizard Island in 2018 and 2019.
What advice do you have for other grant seekers at NSU?
Their best advice for grant seekers is to find someone who you work well with to write a grant. While they had only met a few times in person, they worked very well together planning and writing this grant over Zoom. They worked effectively to divide and conquer on various parts of the grant and tapped into NSU-provided support. Melanie Bauer from the Grant Writing Lab helped them find the best funding opportunity fit for their project idea (they were initially considering an NSF IGE grant, but the NSF IRES program was better suited with its focus on international research training). They also found excellent support for their grant documents and application process working with Veronica Delgado, their OSP grant officer. Both have also been enjoying the Grant Writing Lab webinars.
Their grant planning process began when they started talking about finding funding for this kind of course in August 2020, which was about three months before the deadline of the grant opportunity they ultimately pursued. In the ideal world, they say they would have started earlier but Nadler had just joined NSU in July 2020. This grant required a lot of collaborators to get on board, which took about a month to nail down. Who was participating would ultimately impact how the course would be run, so they waited to begin writing the heart of the proposal until September. They found that compiling additional documents beyond the main project narrative took longer than they expected, especially when they were working with their collaborators to obtain information and documentation. Therefore, they advise investigators to start the planning and budgeting phase well before writing, especially when working with many collaborators, after which the writing phase can be more streamlined.
They also found it valuable to have a full draft of the main proposal text completed a couple weeks before the deadline so they could circulate it to others (colleagues and NSU grant support persons). This helped to get as many eyes on it as possible and obtain feedback on places they were not clear in their writing. It was also helpful having a non-expert read their proposal because you never know who the grant reviewers will be, especially for an education-focused proposal.
What are the next grant proposals on your agendas?
Dr. Nadler plans to apply for a Department of Defense (DoD) Office of Naval Research basic research grant initially, and if not successful then to pursue an NSF Biological Sciences research grant. Dr. Cyronak plans to write an NSF research grant to the Chemical Oceanography program in the Division of Ocean Sciences.
Additionally, Cyronak has been encouraging postdocs and graduate students to write their own fellowship proposals to support their training and his research, such as NSF’s Graduate Research Fellowship Program (GRFP). The GRFP pays for a student’s stipend and tuition for three years, which typically can take up 25% or more of a research grant budget. Winning the GRFP also opens up other funding sources for students to fund their own research. He has found that having students form a community and support each other to write these grants and get feedback on their writing is invaluable. This not only helps the students, but helps the faculty accomplish their research goals by providing salaried graduate students who can focus on research. Cyronak also plans to apply for a future NSF REU grant to engage undergraduates in coral reef research here at the NSU Oceanography Center.