We report on a recently completed, first calculation of the full next-to-leading order QCD corrections for heavy flavor contributions to the inclusive structure function $g_1$ in longitudinally polarized deep-inelastic scattering. All results are derived with largely analytical methods and retain the full dependence on the heavy quark's mass. As a first phenomenological application, inclusive charm production at a future electron-ion collider and its sensitivity to the polarized gluon distribution is studied. Theoretical uncertainties due to the residual dependence on unphysical factorization and renormalization scales are estimated.