NSF announces 21 new awards supporting innovative graduate education

The U.S. National Science Foundation announced 21 new awards through the agency's Innovations in Graduate Education (NSF IGE) program. This $14 million investment supports awardees spanning nine states and the District of Columbia, six NSF Established Programs to Stimulate Competitive Research jurisdictions and five Hispanic-serving institutions and includes $10 million of "CHIPS and Science Act of 2022" funds. This act supports NSF IGE projects that will pilot, test and validate innovative approaches, career exploration and, through a newly introduced Track 2, research on how various systemic innovations in science, technology, engineering and mathematics graduate education impact graduate student outcomes. The program has funded projects at 84 institutions (including 27 non-research-intensive institutions and 17 minority-serving institutions) across 35 states and the District of Columbia. 

The IGE program encourages developing and implementing bold, new and potentially transformative approaches to STEM graduate education training. The program now offers two tracks: one that supports career preparation and student success pilots, and one that encourages systemic interventions and policies, with the primary goal being to support research on how various systemic innovations in STEM graduate education impact graduate student outcomes (such as graduation rates, retention and employment). 

IGE projects are intended to generate the knowledge required for customization, implementation and broader adoption of potentially transformative approaches to graduate education. To further support this effort, the IGE program awarded the Council of Graduate Schools a cooperative agreement in 2021 to establish the NSF IGE Innovation Acceleration Hub, which fosters learning and collaboration among IGE awardees to provide broader dissemination of information and opportunities for learning across the STEM graduate community. 

The 2024 IGE awards include the following projects: 

• IGE: Track 2: Comparing rotations and direct admissions pathways to graduate education in the sciences: an assessment of policy and practice, University of Minnesota-Twin Cities 
• IGE Track 1: Assessing and improving real-world problem-solving skills in graduate physics coursework, Auburn University 
• IGE Track 1: Place-Based Experiential Learning to Support Interdisciplinary STEM Graduate Degrees, Boise State University 
• IGE Track 2: Graduate Communities for Academic Fellowship & Efficacy (Grad CAFE): A Holistic Multi-tiered Mentoring Model, University of Arizona 
• IGE (Track 1): Preparing STEM Graduate Students for Inclusive Leadership, University of Massachusetts Amherst 
• IGE: Track 1: Empowering Tomorrow's Scholars: A Comprehensive Training Initiative for Graduate Students in Scientific Peer Review, University of California-Berkeley 
• Collaborative Research: IGE: Track1: Caselet: Deliberate Practice with Scalable Case-based Learning to Enhance Data Science Problem Solving Competency, University of Maryland Baltimore County 
• Collaborative Research: IGE: Track1: Caselet: Deliberate Practice with Scalable Case-based Learning to Enhance Data Science Problem Solving Competency, The University of Central Florida Board of Trustees 
• IGE: Track 2: Transforming Graduate STEM Education: A Study of a Data Science and AI Credential for STEM Doctoral Students, University of Chicago 
• IGE: Track 2: Mobilizing Community Cultural Wealth to Transform STEM Graduate Education, University of California-Santa Cruz 
• Collaborative Research: IGE: Track 2: SciComm LIFT: Leveraging Institutional capacity for eFfective graduate student Training, University of Wyoming 
• Collaborative Research: IGE: Track 2: SciComm LIFT: Leveraging Institutional capacity for eFfective graduate student Training, American University 
• Collaborative Research: IGE: Track 2: SciComm LIFT: Leveraging Institutional capacity for eFfective graduate student Training, University of Denver 
• Collaborative Research: IGE: Track 2: SciComm LIFT: Leveraging Institutional capacity for eFfective graduate student Training, Colorado State University 
• IGE: Track 2: Cultivating an Indigenous Graduate Research Environment to Enhance Retention and Scientific Careers, University of Wisconsin-Madison 
• IGE: Track 2: EDU EPSCoR DCL: EMPOWERS: Elevating Mentoring Practices for Optimal Work-life balance in Education and Research in STEM Graduate Studies, Clemson University 
• IGE Track 1: Integrating Artificial Intelligence Technologies into Mining Education, University of Kentucky Research Foundation 
• Scaling a Systems Approach to Inclusive Graduate Research Environments: A Track 2 Proposal to NSF's Innovations in Graduate Education (IGE) Program, Council of Graduate Schools 
• IGE: Track 1: Science to Policy: Operationalizing Knowledge from Education to Society (SPOKES), University of California-Riverside 
• IGE: Track 1: Overcoming Geographic Isolation with Research Communities, University of Hawaii 
• IGE: Track 2: The California State University Wellbeing Alliance for Research Masters (CSU WARM), California State University-Stanislaus 

Read more about the IGE program and visit nsf.gov.