Background

SSE is aware that historical and modern-day cultural biases and lack of diversity in an applicant pool may lead to biases in the allocation of grants, prizes, and awards. Beginning with the 2020 Graduate Research Excellence Grant competitions, SSE requested voluntary demographic information from award applicants in an effort to address bias and promote equity in awarding across multiple axes of diversity. Answering demographic questions was voluntary—each question was required but included a “Prefer not to say” option. Answers to the demographic questions were not available to the evaluation committee during the first step of the evaluation process—the scoring and ranking of application materials (described here). The demographic data were used to assess the diversity of the applicant pool and the differences between the composition of the applicant pool and the recipient population.

We are still in the process of gathering demographic data on our membership, and so were unable to assess differences between the diversity of the applicant pool or recipient population and our total membership during this round of awards. As part of SSE’s commitment to diversity, equity, and inclusion, the GREG Award Committees are working with the SSE Diversity Committee to pursue equity in awarding, as well as efforts to increase award proposals from those who identify as belonging to historically excluded groups. In 2020, in an effort to assist students with less experience submitting proposals, we provided samples of previously funded proposals to applicants.

Evaluation Process & Diversity Assessment

Demographic information is not part of the evaluation process and is not available to reviewers at any time during the proposal review process. Anonymized information is used by the SSE Diversity Committee to assess the demographic composition of the applicant pool and of the pool of awardees, and when necessary, the Diversity Committee recommends additional awards to better align the awardee pool with the applicants. Only staff working on behalf of the society—not in academic science—have access to identifiable demographic data for the sake of reporting. All data are stored securely in keeping with the SSE Data Privacy Policy. We welcome any comments or concerns you might have about this process.

In the 2020 GREG - Rosemary Grant Advanced Award competition, the award committee received 107 applications. Each application was randomly assigned, avoiding conflicts of interest, to three evaluators from the evaluation committee, who scored the applications on five criteria (see Evaluation Criteria). All application scores were standardized within evaluators to account for scoring variation among evaluators, then ranked across the entire pool of applications. Thirteen projects were chosen as awardees based on application scores and demographic data.

DATA PRIVACY STATEMENT: Upon completion of each competition, answers to demographic questions were anonymized and disassociated with all identifying information. Anonymized responses will be archived in order to analyze the composition of applicant pools over time.

Funding Sources

The GREG Rosemary Grant Advanced Award budget allowed for funding of 10 applications. Two additional grants were funded by donations to the George W. Gilchrist Student Support Fund, and one additional grant was funded in part by the SSE President’s discretionary annual budget allocation.