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Strategic Objective

Integrate education and research to support development of a diverse STEM workforce with cutting-edge capabilities

Strategic Objective

Integrate education and research to support development of a diverse STEM workforce with cutting-edge capabilities

Lead Office: Office of the Director

Themes:

Education, Training, Employment, and Social Services General Science, Space, and Technology

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Overview
Progress Update
Related Goals

Overview

Progress Update

The Strategic Review examined the strengths and weaknesses of NSF’s three primary graduate support mechanisms: research assistantships, fellowships, and traineeships.

1. With its current ratio of 80 percent research assistantships, 15 percent fellowships, and 5 percent traineeships, is NSF meeting the objectives of G1/O2?

2. What are the strengths and weaknesses of the three primary graduate support mechanisms employed by NSF? What are the ratios of graduate support mechanisms by discipline?

The Strategic Review used evidence and information provided by external evaluations of NSF programs, National Center for Science & Engineering Statistics (NCSES) published reports, a special tabulation of data from the NCSES Survey of Earned Doctorates, reports from professional associations, and other sources to answer the key analytical questions.

The primary mechanisms of NSF graduate support are research assistantships (RAs) linked to individual investigator awards (less than 5 percent are linked to Centers or similar types of programs), fellowships (directly awarded to the graduate student to support their own research), and traineeships (awarded to an institution to support graduate students participating in a particular research program). Recent high-profile reports have stated that the current graduate support system rests too heavily on individual research grants and that a shift to more multiple-year fellowships and traineeships is warranted, returning to a more balanced system of graduate student support similar to that of the 1960s.^1,2 These reports are generally critical of RAs, with statements such as “students on research grants are not necessarily provided with the kinds of programmatic commitment to success, alignment with 21st-century careers, and professional development activities that are components of training grants.”¹

The sources of evidence that were reviewed suggest that all support mechanisms have been successful in preparing students for the workforce. Although some data exists to understand the impacts of both fellowships and traineeships, and there are some data for center-based RAs, to date there has been no comprehensive data collection across all three graduate support mechanisms to assess the strengths and weaknesses of each approach. To better understand NSF’s portfolio of graduate support, the agency should undertake a careful analysis of the relative merits and risks of each support mechanism.

Numerous factors will complicate this assessment. During their tenure in graduate school, most students are supported by more than one type of funding mechanism that may come from a number of sources and for only part of the academic year.³ There are also more sources of support than RAs, traineeships, and fellowships. Graduate students can also be supported on teaching assistantships (TA), scholarships, and/ or self-supported through their own resources.⁴ Another complication is that the ratios of support mechanisms differ greatly by discipline⁴, though there are few data to determine the primary cause driving these differences, such as whether they are resulting from external constraints, whether they have developed organically in response to the needs of the respective research communities, or a combination of both. Biological sciences have the highest percentage of traineeships (8 percent) relative to all funding sources (including teaching assistants, self-support and “other”) with all other disciplines having less than 3 percent. The percent of fellowship support is relatively constant between 5 percent and 14 percent across most disciplines. Psychology and computer science have high percentages of self-support (~50 percent) whereas biological sciences, physical sciences, geoscience, and mathematics have 25 percent or less.

3. Are certain mechanisms of NSF graduate student support more effective in increasing diversity of the STEM workforce?

Amalgamated data across all disciplines from CY 2009 to CY 2013 show that RAs, fellowships/scholarships, and TAs are the dominant support mechanisms for all racial/ethnic groups, with American Indian/Alaska Native and Black students also having significant funding coming from their personal savings and loans (23 percent to 25 percent).³ These data also indicate that for all underrepresented groups, fellowships/scholarships are the primary means of support in graduate school (32 percent to 39 percent of doctoral graduates), with RAs (15 percent to 24 percent) and TAs (10 percent to 13 percent) providing less support. Significant differences in the proportion of underrepresented groups across disciplines means that amalgamated demographic data mask graduate support differences among disciplines.⁵ Nevertheless, even when analyzing data on fellowship support provided to underrepresented groups by discipline, there is a strong indication that this mechanism is effective in increasing diversity in science and engineering doctoral recipients.⁶ Data also show that, since RAs are open to foreign students and other graduate support mechanisms are not, permanent residents (40 percent) and temporary residents (54 percent) rely more heavily on RA support as compared to U.S. citizens (27 percent).³ Unfortunately, with available data it is not possible to determine the level to which RA support of foreign students is impacting this avenue for supporting underrepresented groups.³

When considering differences in gender, for those disciplines where the number of male to female doctoral candidates is similar or less than 1:2, the distribution of funding across all types of support is nearly equal. For those disciplines where females are a clear minority, the fellowship/scholarship support of female graduate students increases to similar levels as underrepresented groups.⁵

Opportunities for Action or Improvement
• Initiate a data collection using a common, well-documented methodology that will allow comparisons across all three graduate support mechanisms.
• Analyze current approaches that aim to improve graduate student preparedness for entering the workforce beyond traditional roles in academia.
• Understand how awardee institutions position graduate students for future careers and identify NSF programs that contribute to these types of training activities. Support workshops to discuss effective practices for ensuring graduate preparedness. Support pilot programs of new concepts in broadening graduate skills.
• Explore whether additional investments in fellowships targeting increasing diversity would further the goals of G1/O2.

In their cross-cutting assessment of the Strategic Review results, the PIO and COO determined that activities initiated in response to these recommendations should be tracked as an Agency Priority Goal.

¹Research Universities and the Future of America: Ten Breakthrough Actions Vital to Our Nation's Prosperity and Security. Committee on Research Universities; Board on Higher Education and Workforce; Policy and Global Affairs; National Research Council. (2012).

² Advancing Graduate Education in the Chemical Sciences. Summary Report of an ACS Presidential Commission. American Chemical Society. (2013).

³Special tabulation of data from the Survey of Earned Doctorates. National Science Foundation, National Center for Science and Engineering Statistics. March 2015.

⁴Tables 35-41, Survey of Graduate Students and Postdoctorates in Science and Engineering (2012). National Science Foundation, National Center for Science and Engineering Statistics.

⁵ Tables 35-41, Doctorate Recipients from U.S. Universities: 2012. Special Report NSF 14-305. National Science Foundation, National Center for Science and Engineering Statistics. 2012. Arlington, VA. Available at www.nsf.gov/statistics/sed/2012/.

⁶ Women, Minorities, and Persons with Disabilities in Science and Engineering: 2015. National Science Foundation, National Center for Science and Engineering Statistics. 2015. Special Report NSF 15-311. Arlington, VA. Available at www.nsf.gov/statistics/wmpd/.

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Strategic Goals

Strategic Goal:

Transform the Frontiers of Science and Engineering

Statement:

Transform the Frontiers of Science and Engineering

Strategic Objectives

Invest in fundamental research to ensure significant continuing advances across science, engineering, and education

Statement:

Invest in fundamental research to ensure significant continuing advances across NSF science, engineering, and education.

Description:

This objective encompasses NSF’s largest and most important function – awarding grants to support research. This investment objective has a clear record of producing major new paradigms and technology disruptions that have the power to change our world and impact individual lives. Investments have led to major discoveries recognized by the most highly prized international awards. These types of investments have potentially high payoffs, but are not without risk, as major advances cannot result from every grant. It is rarely possible to predict whether any specific award will generate outcomes with important societal implications. Rather, fundamental research will generate new knowledge that may in the future contribute, often in unpredictable ways, to addressing a national challenge. Often, a long period of incremental advances in knowledge is needed to set the stage for the creative leaps that produce game-changing innovation.

It is vital to the successful realization of this strategic objective that NSF places a high priority on cultivating strong communities of fundamental researchers and intellectual pioneers across the globe, working both as individuals and in a variety of collaborative ways. It is also important that NSF balance its portfolio with a mix of programs and funding modalities to ensure fundamental research is conducted across a wide variety of fields of science, engineering, and education.

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FY 16-17 Priority Goal: Invest strategically in public participation in science, technology, engineering, and mathematics research (PPSR)

Statement:

Build the capacity of the Nation to solve research challenges and improve learning by investing strategically in crowdsourcing and other forms of public participation in science, technology, engineering, and mathematics research (PPSR).

By September 30, 2017, NSF will implement mechanisms to expand and deepen the engagement of the public in research.

Description:

Problem/Opportunity:

Scientists, mathematicians, and engineers have involved the public in their research efforts to solve challenging problems for centuries in a variety of fields. For example, daily precipitation data collected by volunteers throughout the US have been used to develop more accurate, fine-grained models that improve weather forecasting, agriculture, and disaster risk analyses. Water quality and wildlife monitoring projects allow communities to understand their local environments in systematic ways and allow them to compare their findings with those from other areas. These types of activities have been referred to in a variety of ways. For this Agency Priority Goal, "Public Participation in Science, technology, engineering, and mathematics Research" (PPSR) is used as an overarching term that includes citizen science, crowdsourcing research, and similar activities.

PPSR has grown significantly in the past decade, in part due to new technological tools that facilitate interactions between scientists and participants. There are a number of economic, societal, and technological trends that are increasing the variety and value of what public participation in research can accomplish. These trends include: the democratization of the tools needed to design and make a variety of items; the Maker Movement; the emergence of online communities with shared interests in projects such as exploration of diverse fields of science, technology, engineering, and mathematics (STEM) by members of the public; and crowdfunding platforms that allow teams to raise funding for their projects.

New technological tools also have facilitated crowdsourcing research, a process in which open calls are made for voluntary contributions to STEM problem-solving. These calls are typically either to a non-specified group of individuals ("the crowd") or to individuals with specific expertise, thus leveraging the skills and knowledge of many.

Without public participants and their contributions, some STEM research that addresses challenging problems would not be practical or even possible, e.g., projects mandating data collection from many geographical locations or over long periods of time or projects that require expertise for analysis of data as well as large sets of visual or numeric data. PPSR approaches hold promise to continue to address new research questions and contribute to ongoing STEM research. Moreover, citizen science and crowdsourcing research provide opportunities for the broadest possible participation in learning how STEM research is done and in engaging in it directly. Participants include individuals from urban, suburban and rural communities; diverse economic, geographic, racial, ethnic, gender, and linguistic groups; and individuals with a range of abilities and disabilities.

The motivation for PPSR may be derived from community concerns or may be researcher-led. The level of public involvement varies from being contributory (e.g., collecting and recording data) to collaborative (e.g., analyzing samples and discussing results) to co-created (in which the public might be involved in all phases of the scientific process from defining the question for investigation, to experimenting, analyzing, and reporting). Thus, people with various interests and abilities are often able to participate and contribute productively.

With the opportunity to reach more people and therefore collect and analyze data sets more extensively than possible through the efforts of scientists alone, PPSR may go beyond simply enhancing our ability to do traditional STEM research better. Citizen science and crowdsourcing science enable us to pursue entirely new avenues of research and development that can only be achieved through public-scientist collaborations. The different perspectives and habits of mind that public participants can bring to bear on the interpretation of data may also open new avenues of research and development.

Over the past decade, NSF has funded hundreds of STEM research projects that rely on PPSR across a diverse array of fields. The scope of PPSR is broad and encompasses geosciences and biological sciences, technology and engineering, social and behavioral sciences, education, computer and information sciences, and physical sciences. These projects collectively have created a strong foundation for future PPSR activities and have identified areas for potential improvement and expansion. The next phase of NSF investments will expand beyond project-by-project approaches to explore underlying issues and areas for innovation. In particular, this next phase could help identify: new research challenges that might be addressed using PPSR; new PPSR-enabling technology; social aspects of working with the public; effective PPSR program design; learning experience facilitated by PPSR; ways in which PPSR can broaden participation in STEM; and a myriad of data-related issues, including data quality and collection, data management, visualization, and data ownership models. This phase of investments should also prompt the broader community to tackle long-standing but unresolved STEM challenges and to open doors to new STEM research areas.

To achieve this Agency Priority Goal NSF will use three specific mechanisms to fund proposals that explicitly include PPSR approaches: Research Coordination Networks (RCNs), EArly-concept Grants for Exploratory Research (EAGERs), and supplements to existing awards. Research Coordination Networks support communication and coordination across disciplinary, organizational, institutional, and geographic boundaries, thus facilitating ongoing activities above the project level. EAGERs are designed as "high risk-high payoff" awards. These types of awards will likely push our collective understandings of how PPSR is leveraged to support scientific discovery and the public's engagement with research. Supplements to existing awards provide opportunities to (1) include PPSR approaches in projects that are appropriate for PPSR but haven't already incorporated PPSR approaches and (2) for other projects to deepen their use of PPSR approaches.

This Agency Priority Goal also takes advantage of the Executive Branch's momentum in this area. For example, the White House honored Citizen Science Champions of Change and included citizen science projects and opportunities in its recent science fair. Office of Science and Technology Policy (OSTP) rolled out a new toolkit for federal-sponsored PPSR projects on September 30, 2015 and issued a memo with actions for federal agencies with respect to PPSR. Among the public communities that NSF serves, this Agency Priority Goal is relevant and timely. It addresses the need for investments in PPSR as articulated in recent journals, such as Science; at conferences, such as the citizen science pre-conference workshop at AAAS in 2015; and by practitioner organizations, such as the Citizen Science Association.

Relationship to agency strategic goals and objectives

PPSR projects have both scientific value and educational value. Thus, PPSR supports NSF Strategic Goal 1, Objective 1 ("Invest in fundamental research to ensure significant continuing advances across science, engineering, and education") and NSF Strategic Goal 2, Objective 2 ("Build the capacity of the Nation to address societal challenges using a suite of formal, informal and broadly available STEM educational mechanisms").

Key barriers and challenges to its achievement

1. Coordinate cross-program and cross-directorate investments that enhance both an understanding of and ability to implement PPSR approaches.

2. Manage expectations among colleagues across the federal government and public sphere as PPSR is further developed to support their daily work.

External factors

OSTP and the Federal Community of Practice for Citizen Science and Crowdsourcing (FCPCSC) have directly contributed to development of this Agency Priority Goal. In addition, activities by federal agencies and offices related to open innovation, citizen science, and crowdsourcing research will inform the state of the field with respect to challenges and opportunities in PPSR.

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Integrate education and research to support development of a diverse STEM workforce with cutting-edge capabilities

Statement:

Integrate education and research to support development of a diverse STEM workforce with cutting-edge capabilities

Description:

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FY 16-17 Priority Goal: Improve STEM graduate student preparedness

Statement:

Improve STEM graduate student preparedness for entering the workforce.

By September 30, 2017, NSF will fund at least three summer institutes and 75 supplements to existing awards to provide STEM doctoral students with opportunities to expand their knowledge and skills to prepare for a range of careers.

Description:

A strong global economy is reliant on the ability to capitalize on technical innovations that result from a skilled and agile STEM workforce. As a result, the Nation’s scientific workforce must evolve and mature to include more doctoral level researchers in positions outside of academia. These positions require comprehensive preparation in science at the graduate level, as well as proficiency in other critical skills.

Surveys of graduate students analyzed in recent reports have demonstrated that graduate student training has not kept pace with STEM workforce needs beyond traditional roles in academia. In recent years there has been a shift in the job market for science and engineering doctorate holder that has resulted in more varied career choices. Scientists and engineers with doctorates are now more evenly split between the business sector (45%) and the education sector (46%) (Source: Survey of Earned Doctorates, National Science Foundation, National Center for Science and Engineering Statistics 2013). Within the education sector, over 90 percent of doctorates are employed at 4-year institutions. However, Ph.D. training remains largely focused on preparation for the research component of academic careers with an emphasis on skills needed at research institutions. There is considerable value to traditional academic training, which can provide doctoral graduates with experience in critical thinking as well as oral and written communication

The purpose of this Priority Goal is to provide opportunities for science and engineering doctoral students so they can acquire the knowledge, experience, and skills needed for highly productive careers, inside and outside of academe. Although investments in the Graduate Research Internship Program (GRIP) and Graduate Research Opportunities Worldwide (GROW) provide support across disciplines that help address this issue, a larger, agency-wide effort directed at the specific goal of determining effective approaches to increased graduate student preparedness is needed.

The activities in this APG will be undertaken in coordination with NSF’s forthcoming strategic plan for investment in graduate students and graduate education. In addition, these approaches will be reported at the NSTC Committee on STEM Education’s Interagency Working Group on Graduate Education (co-chaired by NSF and NIH) as a possible model for consideration by other agencies.

The activities in this APG will be undertaken in coordination with NSF’s forthcoming strategic framework for investment in graduate education. In addition, these approaches will be reported at the National Science and Technology Council (NSTC) Committee on STEM Education’s Interagency Working Group on Graduate Education (co-chaired by NSF and NIH).

The NSTC Committee on STEM notes that “tomorrow’s STEM workforce will need to include effective change makers and entrepreneurs in business, public service, civil society, and academia. Some universities are encouraging students to set and meet more ambitious goals for their research, education, and service; giving students greater autonomy earlier in their career; connecting students to real-world problems at a regional, national, and global level; and involving students in the design of university curricula, research initiatives, and collaborations with external partners.” This APG will explore ways to partner with universities to identify and spread promising practices for achieving this vision.

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FY 16-17 Priority Goal: Invest strategically in public participation in science, technology, engineering, and mathematics research (PPSR)

Statement:

By September 30, 2017, NSF will implement mechanisms to expand and deepen the engagement of the public in research.

Description:

Problem/Opportunity:

Relationship to agency strategic goals and objectives

Key barriers and challenges to its achievement

1. Coordinate cross-program and cross-directorate investments that enhance both an understanding of and ability to implement PPSR approaches.

2. Manage expectations among colleagues across the federal government and public sphere as PPSR is further developed to support their daily work.

External factors

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FY 14-15 Priority Goal: Increase the Nation’s Data Science Capacity

Statement:

Improve the Nation’s capacity in data science by investing in the development of human capital and infrastructure.

By September 30^th, 2015, implement mechanisms to support the training and workforce development of future data scientists; increase the number of multi-stakeholder partnerships to address the nation’s big-data challenges; and increase investments in current and future data infrastructure extending data –intensive science into more research communities.

Description:

Innovative information technologies are transforming the fabric of society, and data represent a transformative new currency for science, education, government, and commerce. Data are everywhere; they are produced in rapidly increasing volume and variety by virtually all scientific, educational, governmental, societal and commercial enterprises. (For more information see “Dealing with Data,” Science Magazine, Volume 331, February 11, 2011.)

Today we live in an era of data and information. This era is enabled by modern experimental methods and observational studies; large-scale simulations; scientific instruments, such as telescopes and particle accelerators; Internet transactions, email, videos, images, and click streams; and the widespread deployment of sensors everywhere – in the environment, in our critical infrastructure, such as in bridges and smart grids, in our homes, and even on our clothing. Every day, 2.5 quintillion bytes of data are generated – so much that 90 percent of the data in the world today has been created in the last two years alone (http://www-01.ibm.com/software/data/bigdata/).

It is important to note that when we talk about big data it is not just the enormous volume of data that needs to be emphasized, but also the heterogeneity, velocity, and complexity that collectively create the science and engineering challenges we face today.

In December 2010, the President’s Council of Advisors on Science and Technology (PCAST) published a report to the President and Congress entitled: Designing a Digital Future: Federally Funded Research and Development in Networking and Information Technology. (http://www.whitehouse.gov/sites/default/files/microsites/ostp/pcast-nitrd-report-2010.pdf) In that report, PCAST pointed to the research challenges involved in large-scale data management and analysis and the critical role of Networking and Information Technology (NIT) in moving from data to knowledge to action, underpinning the Nation’s future prosperity, health and security.

Through long-term, sustained investments in foundational computing, communications and computational research, and the development and deployment of large-scale facilities and cyberinfrastructure, federal agency R&D investments over the past several decades have both helped generate this explosion of data as well as advance our ability to capture, store, analyze, and use these data for societal benefit. More specifically, we have seen fundamental advances in machine learning, knowledge representation, natural language processing, information retrieval and integration, network analytics, computer vision, and data visualization, which together have enabled Big Data applications and systems that have the potential to transform all aspects of our lives.

These investments are already starting to pay off, demonstrating the power of Big Data approaches across science, engineering, medicine, commerce, education, and national security, and laying the foundations for U.S. competitiveness for many decades to come. But much more needs to be done, particularly in four areas: 1) basic research; 2) data infrastructure; 3) education and workforce development; and 4) community outreach.

NSF can catalyze progress in these areas by developing programs to engage the research community, and by creating mechanisms to catalyze the development of people and infrastructure to address the challenges posed by this new flood of data.

NSF will help increase the number of data scientists engaged in academic research, development, and implementation. As defined in the 2005 NSB publication of Long-lived Digital Data Collections: Enabling Research and Education in the 21^st Century defines data scientists as “the information and computer scientists, database and software programmers, disciplinary experts, curators, and expert annotators, librarians, archivists and others, who are crucial to the successful management of a digital data collection.”

Using its ability to convene diverse sets of stakeholders, NSF will promote multi-stakeholder partnerships by supporting workshops and follow-on activities that bring together representatives of industry, academia, not-for-profit organizations, and other entities to address current and future big-data challenges. NSF will also leverage existing programs, such as the NSF Research Traineeship (NRT) and the Graduate Research Fellowship (GRF) programs, and create new programs and tracks to current programs, as needed, to support the creation of more researchers and students competent in the deep analytical and technical skills required to address those challenges.

NSF will develop strategies to build and sustain data infrastructure for the 21^st century through CIF21.

NSF will coordinate with other agencies through the National Science and Technology Council to achieve this goal.

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Provide world-class research infrastructure to enable major scientific advances

Statement:

Provide world-class research infrastructure to enable major scientific advances

Description:

To fulfill our core mission of “promoting the progress of science,” NSF must provide the research community with advanced and powerful tools and capabilities to keep the Nation’s research enterprise at the global forefront. These tools and capabilities include major research facilities, mid-scale instrumentation, advanced computational and data resources, and cyberinfrastructure. In addition, it is essential to prepare the next-generation workforce to develop, maintain, and employ the infrastructure to advance science. Large facilities hold the promise of major discoveries and revolutionary advances that can propel whole fields forward, thereby justifying significant investment costs. These facilities also are training grounds for the scientists and engineers of tomorrow. Smaller, so-called “mid-scale” instruments are increasingly critical for enabling fundamental research in the experimental sciences; there is an urgent need to adequately provide this category of instrumentation. Advanced computational and data resources and cyberinfrastructure take many forms and are essential to S&E research. Balancing investments in the development and operation of these tools and capabilities with the rest of NSF’s portfolio is a challenging management responsibility. Special challenges derive from life cycle planning, human capital development, and the curation, distribution, and management of the explosion of data being produced in all fields of research. As with all NSF awards, infrastructure projects must meet extremely high standards of scientific merit and broader impacts, and comparable standards of project planning and execution.

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Agency Priority Goals

FY 14-15: Ensure Public Access to Publications

Statement:

Increase public access to NSF-funded peer-reviewed publications. By September 30, 2015, NSF-funded investigators will be able to deposit versions of their peer-reviewed articles in a repository that will make them available to the public.

Description:

Progress in science and technology, and the associated benefits for the American people, thrives in an environment of open communication. Therefore, the National Science Foundation (NSF) seeks to enable increased access to the results of its investments in research. NSF will do this by reducing barriers to communication of research results, while ensuring the integrity of the research record, protection of sensitive information, and consistency with existing law. To this end and pursuant to the Office of Science and Technology Policy (OSTP) memorandum, Increasing Access to the Results of Federally Funded Scientific Research (February 22, 2013), NSF will articulate a strategy and develop plans that will require recipients of NSF funding to deposit a copy of their work in a public access repository. Although some conditions of deposit are likely to vary, NSF expects to adhere to the OSTP recommended guideline for peer-reviewed journal publications that will delay free access to either the author’s final accepted version of the manuscript or the published version of record no longer than 12 months after date of initial publication.

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