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News Release 16-104

First NSF INCLUDES awards issued to 37 projects

Program aims to broaden participation in STEM at national scale, with initial awards totaling nearly $14 million

NSF INCLUDES awardee Marco Hatch

NSF INCLUDES awardee Marco Hatch (right; blue shirt) leads a youth science outreach effort.


September 12, 2016

This material is available primarily for archival purposes. Telephone numbers or other contact information may be out of date; please see current contact information at media contacts.

The National Science Foundation (NSF) has issued its first-ever awards for the NSF INCLUDES program, a comprehensive initiative to enhance U.S. leadership in science and engineering by broadening participation in the fields of Science, Technology, Engineering and Mathematics (STEM).

NSF INCLUDES (Inclusion across the Nation of Communities of Learners of Underrepresented Discoverers in Engineering and Science) aims to improve access to STEM education and career pathways at the national scale, making them more widely inclusive to underserved populations. Over the next decade, NSF will expand the program, with the goal of developing a science and engineering workforce that better reflects the diversity of U.S. society.

The initial recipients comprise 37 Design and Development Launch Pilots, funded through two-year grants aimed at supporting projects with the potential to deliver prototypes for bold, new models that broaden participation in STEM. They also include 11 grants for conferences that will explore the development of backbone organizations to support a national network of NSF INCLUDES alliances and partnerships.

"For more than six decades, NSF has funded the development of STEM talent, with the goals of furthering scientific discovery and ensuring the nation's security, economy and ability to innovate. NSF INCLUDES aims to broaden participation in STEM by reaching populations traditionally underserved in science and engineering," NSF Director France Córdova said. "I'm gratified to see such a strong start to this program, which we hope will be an enduring investment in our nation's future in scientific discovery and technological innovation."

NSF has a long history of supporting broadening participation programs. NSF INCLUDES, the latest addition to this portfolio, began after the congressionally mandated NSF Committee on Equal Opportunities in Science and Engineering (CEOSE) published a report in 2013 recommending "a bold new initiative, focused on broadening participation of underrepresented groups in STEM." As part of the response to that recommendation, NSF incorporated input from critical stakeholders into the design of NSF INCLUDES. The new initiative employs the concept of collective impact, incorporating partners across a variety of sectors to maximize results.

NSF INCLUDES will invest in alliances and partnerships that scale up efforts to broaden STEM participation among underrepresented groups, including women, Hispanics, African Americans, Native Americans, persons with disabilities, people from rural areas and people of low socioeconomic status. Multi-year NSF INCLUDES alliances will engage partners from private and corporate philanthropy, federal agencies and scientific professional societies.

Building on these initial awards, the program will provide networked testbeds for STEM inclusion, connecting participants and enabling them to determine the key components and approaches that lead to sustainable progress at a national scale.

The 2016 project titles, recipient institutions, and principal investigators are listed below.

Design and Development Launch Pilots

A National Network for Access and Inclusion in Physics Graduate Education

Early Engagement in Research: Key to STEM Retention

Early STEM Engagement for Minority Males through a Network of Minority Serving Institutions

STEPs to STEM

Camino a la Ciencia: A Program Designed to Recruit, Retain, and Train Hispanic Women in STEM Disciplines

San Francisco: Computing for All Levels & Learners (SF CALL)

Integrating Indigenous and Western Knowledge to Transform Learning and Discovery in the Geosciences

Bay Area Regional Collaboration to Expand and Strengthen STEM (RECESS)

WeC4Communites (We Compute for our Communities): Community-Focused Computing for Minoritized Youth

Consortium of Minority Doctoral Scholars (CMDS)

Re-Engaging the Disengaged: A Community Centered Approach to Improving STEM Pathways for Underrepresented Students

Redefining Potential - the Upstate NY Design and Development Pilot for Diverse Student Populations

Building upon CAHSI's Success to Establish a Networked Community for Broadening Participation of Hispanics in Graduate Studies

Changing the Face of STEM in the U.S. Virgin Islands through Targeted Interventions to Expand Opportunities and Broaden Participation

Alliance to Strengthen the STEM Tapestry (ASSisT): Motivating Critical Identity Shifts to Weave the STEM Disenfranchised into Science and the Sustainability Workforce

Collaborative Proposal: Coastal Almanac

UTAH PREP

Strengthening the ASSIST Collaborative to Illuminate Engineering Faculty Pathways

Increasing Degrees Awarded to African American, Hispanic, Native American and Women Students in Engineering (50K Coalition)

Enhancing the New Mexico STEM Pipeline -- Design and Development Launch Pilot

Engaging Local Communities in Geoscience Pathways

Improving STEM Persistence in the First Two Years of College.

A Collective Impact Approach to Broadening Participation in the STEM Professoriate

South East Alliance for Persons with Disabilities in STEM (SEAPD-STEM)

(STEM)^3: Scaling (STEM)^2

Mississippi Alliance for Women in Computing (MAWC)

Designing for Diversity: A Networked Improvement Community for Broadening the Participation of Black and Latino Youth in Computational Careers

Building Diverse and Integrative STEM Continua Using Socio-Environmental Systems In and Out of Neighborhoods (DISCUSSION)

Indigenous Women Working Within the Sciences (IWWS)

Northern New Mexico STEM Mentor Collective

QEM Design & Development Launch Pilot (DDLP) Project in Partnership with HBCUs and TCUs

STEM Core Initiative

Creating Academic Pathways in STEM (CAPS): A Model Ecosystem for Supporting Two-Year Transfer

An Integrated Approach to Retain Underrepresented Minority Students in STEM Disciplines

Creating a Diverse STEM Pathway with Community Water Research

WATCH US (Women Achieving Through Community Hubs) in the United States

CIRTL INCLUDES - Toward an Alliance to Prepare a National Faculty for Broadening Success of Underrepresented 2-Year and 4-Year STEM Students

Conferences

High-Leverage Problems, Useful Data, Formative Evaluation, Effective Communication

Informing the Design of the INCLUDES Alliances and National Network: An Intersectionality Approach

California STEM INCLUDES Conference and Network

NSF INCLUDES Conference Grant

Collaborative Research: Envisioning Impact

Accelerating Data-Driven Collaboration for Large-Scale Progress

NSF INCLUDES Conference on Multi-Scale Evaluation in STEM Education

Bridging Engineering Science and Technology (BEST)

Conference to Advance the Collective Impact of Retention and Continuation Strategies for Hispanics and Other Underrepresented Minorities in STEM Fields

The Technical and Human Infrastructure to Support Collective Impact of the INCLUDES Program at the Alliance and Network Levels

Collective Impact as a Pathway to Reinvigorate Broadening Participation in STEM

-NSF-

Media Contacts
Rob Margetta, NSF, (703) 292-2663, email: rmargett@nsf.gov

The U.S. National Science Foundation propels the nation forward by advancing fundamental research in all fields of science and engineering. NSF supports research and people by providing facilities, instruments and funding to support their ingenuity and sustain the U.S. as a global leader in research and innovation. With a fiscal year 2023 budget of $9.5 billion, NSF funds reach all 50 states through grants to nearly 2,000 colleges, universities and institutions. Each year, NSF receives more than 40,000 competitive proposals and makes about 11,000 new awards. Those awards include support for cooperative research with industry, Arctic and Antarctic research and operations, and U.S. participation in international scientific efforts.

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