To:	Reviewers

From:	Geography and Regional Science Program Directors
	Richard J. Aspinall (703/292-4995; raspinal@nsf.gov)
	Thomas J. Baerwald (703/292-7301; tbaerwal@nsf.gov)

For more than a half century, the National Science Foundation has enlisted the judgment of expert reviewers 
from relevant scholarly communities to advise NSF scientific staff about the strengths, weaknesses, and 
potential outcomes of proposed research projects.  This request to evaluate a proposal continues that 
tradition.  We realize that this request is an imposition on your time, but your help is vital to maintain the 
high quality of NSF awards.  Thanks for considering this request.

This proposal was submitted to NSF and is being managed by the Geography and Regional Science (GRS) 
Program.  Please be aware that more than half of the proposals evaluated by GRS are jointly reviewed with 
one or more other programs.  If you are not a geographer or regional scientist, you may well have been 
recommended by the program officer of one of these other programs.  Your review will be considered by 
that that program's advisory panel and program officer as they make decisions regarding possible support 
for this project, just as the we and the GRS Advisory Panel will use your comments as we make funding 
decisions for GRS.

Please allow us to highlight a few items in the standard NSF reviewer-request letter:

     1.  Instead of sending you a copy of the proposal, we have asked you to access it in digital form.  If you 
prefer to have a paper copy of the proposal, NSF will mail one to you promptly.  Please follow the 
instructions in the request letter to ask for a paper copy.

     2.  In addition to accessing the proposal on-line, we ask you to submit your review via the web-based 
FastLane system.  The request letter again provides you with instructions on using FastLane.  You will need 
the 7-digit proposal number and the 6-digit personal identification number (PIN).  These numbers are listed 
at the top of the request letter as well as at the end of this message.  If you cannot use FastLane to submit 
your review, please submit the text of your comments via e-mail to us at grs@nsf.gov.

     3.  When reading the proposal and preparing your review, please consider both of the review criteria 
established by NSF.  The criteria deal with the intellectual merit and the broader impacts of the proposed 
research.  Many reviewers fail to comment on the broader impacts of the project, although these are an 
integral part of the evaluation. 

     4.  Your review will be most helpful to us if we receive it within a few weeks of your receipt of this 
request.  If you can not submit a review until later, however, please do so, because even late-arriving 
reviews are considered and used in our decision-making process.

Thank you once again for considering this request to review this proposal.  We look forward to receiving 
your review and to considering your comments as we make decisions about this proposal.

Proposal Number:  BCS-0318319
 Alan T. Murray
FastLane PIN for this review:  478396
If possible, please submit your review by March 20, 2003.  Thanks.