The U.S. National Science Foundation Research Traineeship annual meeting highlights 10 years of building the STEM workforce
The U.S. National Science Foundation Research Traineeship program (NSF NRT) recently celebrated 10 years of supporting graduate STEM education at its annual meeting. At this year's meeting — the largest gathering of the traineeship community to date — over 400 attendees representing more than 120 projects from institutions across the country came together to share strategies for advancing science, technology, engineering and mathematics graduate education through the power of convergent research.
The Innovations in Graduate Education (NSF IGE) program celebrates the NSF NRT program in achieving this milestone, as the two programs share common roots. When the NRT program was launched in 2014, it had two tracks: one for projects dedicated to education of STEM graduate students through an innovative, evidence-based traineeship approach, and another dedicated solely to piloting, evaluating and scaling bold new graduate education approaches. This second track specifically provided institutions of higher education with opportunities to explore potentially groundbreaking STEM research and education models. These opportunities proved powerful enough for NSF to launch the IGE initiative in 2017, which has now invested more than $40 million in over 80 projects in 35 states and the District of Columbia.