January 15, 2021
As a mid-career scientist or engineer (at the associate professor rank or equivalent), you are familiar with the pressure to remain productive in the lab, yet also obligated to teaching, institutional service and professional development. Being pulled in so many different directions constrains your time and creates inequities in workload, which could hinder research productivity and career advancement in the long term. To address this, the U.S. National Science Foundation created the new Mid-Career Advancement program to help mid-career researchers re-balance and prioritize their time.
Much like NSF’s Faculty Early Career Development Program known as CAREER, the Mid-Career program helps ensure the health and vitality of science at a sensitive career stage. It also aims to lift some of these constraints to support your scientific research career and help build and retain a more diverse science and engineering workforce.