HSI Program Network Resource Centers and Hubs (HSI-Net)

The National Science Foundation (NSF) established the Improving Undergraduate STEM Education: Hispanic-Serving Institutions (HSI Program) in 2017, as directed by Congress [1]. The goals of the HSI Program are to enhance the quality of undergraduate science, technology, engineering, and mathematics (STEM) education and to increase the recruitment, retention, and graduation rates of students pursuing associate's or baccalaureate degrees in STEM at Hispanic-Serving Institutions (HSIs). Intended outcomes of the HSI Program include broadening participation of students who are historically underrepresented in STEM, and expanding students’ pathways to continued STEM education and integration into the STEM workforce.

Through this solicitation under the HSI Program, the NSF will invest in the development of infrastructure to support the HSI Program’s goals. Specifically, the NSF seeks to establish the HSI Program Network Resource Centers and Hub (HSI-Net) consisting of centers and hubs.  This will support:

• Up to two centers: an HSI Program Center for Community Coordination (HSI-CCC), and an HSI Center for Evaluation, Research, and Synthesis (HSI-CERS)— both awarded as cooperative agreements that are national in scope, represent the breadth of activities important to HSIs, and amplify the range of activities in the HSI Program.
• Up to five HSI Program Resource Hubs (HSI-Hubs)— awarded to serve as resources for innovative initiatives organized around key issues that are designed to effectively serve the HSI community and its stakeholders.

Together, these Centers and Hubs will support the community of HSIs and its stakeholders which include HSI Program awardees, HSIs and their administrators, faculty, researchers, and students. The centers should include in their activities student organizations, professional societies, nonprofit organizations, and industry entities that focus in and support HSIs, advocates for HSIs, scholars/researchers on HSIs, and other scientists that promote the advancement of historically underrepresented groups in STEM—including those in HSIs that are not already supported by the NSF.

The Centers and Hubs will conduct activities designed to:

1. Build a network to establish the infrastructure that will guide the HSI communities as they work to achieve the goals of the HSI Program, incentivize institutional transformation, and support community partnerships. 
2. Grow and strengthen organizational capacity at HSIs, developing structures that foster student and/or faculty development and growth, meeting the students where they are in their college careers academically, financially, and socially. 
3. Promote research on and broadening participation in STEM at HSIs and topics related to the HSI Program goals.
4. Produce communication and generate collaborative programming to bring together existing and prospective PIs for purposes of building capacity, developing new knowledge about the HSI community, and reporting on and enhancing the impacts of the HSI Program.

[1] https://uscode.house.gov/view.xhtml?req=(title:42%20section:1862o-12%20edition:prelim)