The growth of the United States STEM workforce is important to economic and global competitiveness. Developing STEM talent among all sectors of society is needed in order to grow the workforce. This planning grant project is building on the established strengths and network of the NSF Centers for Research Excellence in Science and Technology (CREST) with a leadership team of experts from four minority-serving institutions: The California State University, Los Angeles; the University of New Mexico; the University of Puerto Rico-Mayagüez Campus; and the City College of New York, the City University of New York. The project goal is to build a framework, based on the five NSF INCLUDES design elements, that create the capacity required to: (1) Provide support to CREST Centers and other institutions of higher education to develop robust undergraduate research programs and a pool of research-ready underrepresented minority undergraduate students; (2) Engage partnering organizations to expand opportunities to showcase their assets in conference and events that focus on historically underrepresented minority students in STEM; (3) Enhance channels of communication across collaborators, to share opportunities such as scholarships, internships, summer research programs, workshops, and research conferences; and (4) Develop pathway agreements between partnering universities to increase and improve the opportunities for students to go into doctoral and post-doctoral programs. The outcomes of this planning grant are expected to lay the foundation for a future alliance, center or network to address the identified broadening participation challenge in STEM at a national scale.
The planning grant leadership team will engage a steering committee with representatives from the California State University, Bakersfield; the University of Texas at San Antonio; University of California, Merced; Prairie View A&M University; and California State University, San Bernardino. Together, the leadership team and steering committee will conduct workshops with a broad group of institutions of higher education, other CREST Center awardees, professional societies, national laboratories and NSF HBCU Research Infrastructure for Science and Engineering (HBCU-RISE) awardees. The workshops will provide a forum for partnering organizations to build a collaborative infrastructure: To develop a shared vision; to expand the partnerships to include a broad community of organizations and institutions; to establish shared goals and metrics; to solidify the leadership structure; and to establish and improve communication across the partners.
This NSF INCLUDES planning grant is funded by the NSF Inclusion across the Nation of Communities of Learners of Underrepresented Discoverers in Engineering and Science program (NSF INCLUDES), a comprehensive national initiative to enhance U.S. leadership in discoveries and innovations by focusing on diversity, inclusion and broadening participation in STEM at scale. The planning grant is also funded by the NSF’s Centers for Research Excellence in Science and Technology program (CREST); and the CREST program provides support to enhance the research capabilities of minority-serving institutions (MSIs) through the establishment of centers that effectively integrate STEM education and research.
This award reflects NSF's statutory mission and has been deemed worthy of support through evaluation using the Foundation's intellectual merit and broader impacts review criteria.
