ORD Workshops: Current Academic Year
The Office of Research Development will offer several professional development opportunities during the 2026–27 academic year. Unless otherwise indicated, the workshops listed below will be offered in-person on the Clemson main campus. Personnel located on other Clemson campuses can reach out to us at vprord@clemson.edu to discuss other ways to access these events.
Upcoming Workshops
GrantForward Training Webinar
GrantForward is a funding opportunity database and discovery tool designed to help faculty, researchers, and research support staff identify grants and build personalized funding searches. It includes powerful search filters, saved searches, automated funding recommendations, and tools to help users stay current with opportunities aligned to their research interests. In these training webinars, representatives from GrantForward will provide valuable and insightful information on how to navigate through the world’s largest research opportunities database to search for grants with powerful filters and receive personalized grant recommendations based on your research profiles.
Three training webinars will be offered throughout the summer:
June 18 from 9-10 am: Registration Link
July 15 from 9-10 am: Registration Link
August 28 from 12-1 pm: Registration Link
October 5 from 9-10 am: Registration Link
Meeting URL
New NSF Opportunities for Foundational Research
NSF recently announced 12 funding opportunities providing $1.5 billion for foundational research in science and engineering, with a particular focus on federal research priorities. These opportunities are structured to support a wider range of funding mechanisms and represent a shift to a more portfolio-based approach in grantmaking. In this info session, we will discuss these opportunities and highlight key changes of interest to prospective PIs.
Date: August 31, 2026
Time: 12-1 pm
Data Management & Sharing Plans: Navigating New NIH & NSF Requirements
Federal data management and sharing policies continue to evolve, making it more important than ever for researchers to understand current funding agency expectations. Join Clemson Libraries for an interactive workshop covering the latest updates to NIH and NSF Data Management and Sharing Plan (DMSP) requirements. Participants will learn what these updates mean for proposal preparation, how to properly fill out the DMSP, and strategies for developing compliant, competitive plans. The session will also introduce campus resources and tools available through Clemson Libraries to streamline the planning process and support successful grant submissions.
Date: September 14, 2026
Time: 2:30-3:30 pm
Location: TBD
Peer Review Dynamics
In an era where stable research support is increasingly difficult to secure, developing effective strategies for winning competitive research grants has become essential. A key part of that strategy is understanding how proposals are evaluated. This presentation will address basic questions about the peer‑review process: How is peer review actually carried out? How are reviewers selected? What goes through a reviewer’s mind when they evaluate a proposal? What elements do reviewers appreciate, and what aspects tend to raise concerns? Drawing from his own experience in the Office of Research Grants at the American Chemical Society, our guest speaker will discuss these questions in depth and share practical insights into reviewer expectations and decision‑making.
Participants will also be encouraged to raise additional questions relevant to their own proposal development efforts, making the session both interactive and directly applicable to their research goals.
Date: September 28, 2026
Time: 11 am-12 pm
Location: TBD
CAREER Academy Overview
NSF’s prestigious NSF CAREER awards help set up assistant professors’ careers as researchers and educators. Jane Jacobi will provide an overview of the NSF CAREER program and of the ORD CAREER Academy, held every year from January through July. This workshop will be useful for assistant professors who are thinking about submitting CAREER proposals.
Date: October 29, 2026
Time: 12:30-1:30 pm
Location: TBD
Faculty Insight
Faculty Insight is a tool for enhancing research that provides a window onto the efforts of colleagues at Clemson. This hands-on workshop with staff from Academic Analytics/Faculty Insight will guide faculty through using Faculty Insight to find collaborators, identify funding opportunities, and visualize collaboration networks.
Date: Early November 2026
Location: TBD
Register for the workshop: TBD
