Workshop series
Need more depth than a single workshop can provide? These workshop series build your skills and advance your projects.
Your research should connect your passion to discoveries and do good in the world. However, moving from a great idea to a funded, well-executed project isn’t always straightforward. If you’re stuck on how to make your project a reality – or if the reality of doing your project feels overwhelming – you don’t have to navigate alone.
Everyone is welcome in the research enterprise. Everyone brings unique disciplinary expertise, and everyone can learn and refine their practical skills in research and project design. Working with researchers to untangle their ideas and forge a clear path to success is my passion, no matter where you are in your project, professional growth, or research skills.
At Zaposa, we bring over 20 years of experience to your work:
- Federal Grant Strategy: Former NSF Program Director in the Division of Undergraduate Education, managing a $65M award portfolio across 90+ projects.
- National Capacity Building: Co-Director and Founder of the PEER Institute, serving 1,000+ emerging researchers worldwide across 14+ global locations.
- Evidence-Based Pedagogy: Former Research Director of PhysPort, building national tools and assessment resources used by over 20% of US physics faculty.
- Actionable Mentorship: APS Fellow, former Professor of Physics, and author of Research: A Practical Handbook.
Core Services
PI Professional Development & Capacity Building
Build self-efficacy, methodological rigor, and sustainable research capabilities.
Translating classroom insights or disciplinary passion into publishable, federally fundable Discipline-Based Education Research (DBER) or Scholarship of Teaching and Learning (SoTL) is a learnable skill. Through customized 1:1 strategic coaching, immersive field schools, faculty workshops, and departmental colloquia, we help emerging and experienced scholars build confidence and agency in their scholarship.
- 1:1 Coaching & Mentoring: Personalized strategic mentorship for faculty navigating career pivots, research design, writing momentum, or tenure package building.
- PEER Institute Field Schools: Multi-day immersive research retreats focused on generative writing, project design, and community accountability.
- Faculty Workshops & Masterclasses: Interactive, high-energy sessions on research ethics, qualitative/quantitative methods, theoretical frameworks, and internal evaluation capacity.
Featured Programs & Offerings
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Project Development & Visioning
Build clear, coherent, and compelling projects that connect directly to funding opportunities.
Great grant proposals don’t start with writing; they start with building awesome projects. Drawing on insider experience as an NSF Program Director and 20+ years of leading externally funded research, we partner with individual PIs and multi-institutional grant teams to move beyond basic proposal preparation. We help you align your vision with sponsor solicitations, structure rigorous research designs, execute user needs discovery, and ensure every component of your project works together seamlessly.
- Project Visioning & Concept Design: Conceptualizing ambitious, high-impact projects that transform raw research ideas into clear, coherent frameworks.
- Solicitation Alignment & Strategy: Deep-dive strategy to tightly map your project design to specific federal sponsor priorities and merit review criteria (e.g., NSF IUSE, BCSER, S-STEM, CAREER).
- User Needs Discovery & Methodological Architecture: Structuring feasible research questions, data collection streams, and operational logistics.
- Strategic Pivots & Resets: Hands-on consulting to revitalize stalled research projects or reshape an existing effort for a new funding opportunity.
Project & Program Evaluation
Actionable, well-tuned evaluation that drives project success—not box-checking.
Evaluation shouldn’t be a generic, cookie-cutter exercise designed just to tick a reporting requirement. We work directly with PIs to build customized evaluation plans that are finely tuned to the specific design, context, and goals of your initiative. Drawing on two decades of designing robust evaluation systems -— such as the PhysPort Data Explorer, RAWR real-time assessments, and external grant evaluations -— our goal is to provide you with meaningful, high-signal data and timely feedback so you can make smart, strategic decisions for your project.
- Custom-Tuned Evaluation Plans: Designing proposal-stage evaluation frameworks, logic models, and mixed-methods data collection strategies tailored to your exact research questions.
- External Project Evaluation: Serving as the dedicated external evaluator for active federal awards (NSF, foundations), delivering regular formative insights and annual reports.
- Program & Institutional Assessment: Comprehensive, data-driven evaluations of ongoing departmental programs, STEM equity initiatives, and center-level projects.
Ready to Work Together?
Whether you need a 1:1 mentor for your research pivot, training and masterclasses for your group, a thought partner to build an awesome project, or a tailored evaluation plan that actually serves your project, let’s talk.
Zaposa services & strategic support
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