IUSE / Professional Formation of Engineers: Revolutionizing Engineering Departments (IUSE/PFE: RED)

Deadline

Apr 13, 2027 (170 days left)

Who can apply

Others

Award range

$50,000 to $2.0 million

Expected awards

19

Total program funding

$8.0 million

Your own money required

No cost sharing or matching required

Opportunity number

24-564

Posted

Apr 5, 2024

Assistance listing

47.076

More on who can apply

*Who May Serve as PI: For all tracks, the Principal Investigator (PI) must be a Department Chair/Head (or equivalent) of a department for whom a significant percentage of students will graduate or transfer to a program with a bachelor’s degree in engineering or engineering technology. The PI must be empowered to provide leadership for the proposed change process. In cases where the institutional responsibilities of a Department Chair/Head do not enable them to support the degree of change being sought, a Dean, Provost, or other senior leader may serve as PI, provided they will be respons

What it funds

Revolutionizing Engineering Departments (hereinafter referred to as RED) is designed to build upon previous efforts in engineering education research. Specifically, previous and ongoing evaluations of the NSF Engineering Education and Centers Division program and its predecessors, as well as those related programs in the Directorate for STEM Education, have shown that prior investments have significantly improved the first year of engineering students’ experiences, incorporating engineering material, active learning approaches, design instruction, and a broad introduction to professional skills and a sense of professional practice – giving students an idea of what it means to become an engineer. Similarly, the senior year has seen notable change through capstone design experiences, which ask students to synthesize the technical knowledge, skills, and abilities they have gained with professional capacities, using reflective judgment to make decisions and communicate these effectively. However, this ideal of the senior year has not yet been fully realized, because many of the competencies required in capstone design, or required of professional engineers, are only partially introduced in the first year and not carried forward with significant emphasis through the sophomore and junior years. The Directorates for Engineering (ENG) and STEM Education (EDU) are funding projects as part of the RED program, in alignment with the Improving Undergraduate STEM Education (IUSE) framework and Professional Formation of Engineers (PFE) initiative. These projects are designing revolutionary new approaches to engineering education, ranging from changing the canon of engineering to fundamentally altering the way courses are structured to creating new departmental structures and education…

What to do next

1. Open the official notice on Grants.gov and download the full announcement (the NOFO) and any attachments.
2. Check you can apply: the eligible applicants above, and any detail in the notice's eligibility section.
3. Register your organization in SAM.gov (choose "all awards") and create a Grants.gov account; allow several weeks the first time.
4. Apply through Grants.gov exactly as the notice says, before Apr 13, 2027. Late applications are usually not accepted.

New to this? Applying for a federal grant, step by step · Register to apply · How to read the notice · Write the narrative · Build the budget · Agency contact: grantsgovsupport@nsf.gov

From Grants.gov's official daily extract of Oct 25, 2026. The notice on Grants.gov and its attachments are what count. UX Contract is independent and not a government website.