According to a news release, the NSF recently released a “Dear Colleague Letter” seeking proposals from researchers, nonprofits and other education organizations for research infrastructure to study approaches to educational equity, including any combination of tech equipment, cyber infrastructure, large-scale data sets and personnel. In addition to infrastructure, the announcement noted that the $8.6 million partnership will also aim to provide training and research experiences.
“We know there are millions of talented people missing from our STEM enterprise, and we are excited to catalyze new thinking that will reach them and provide unique opportunities to shape STEM education and the STEM workforce of tomorrow,” NSF Director Sethuraman Panchanathan said in a public statement.
NSF’s Senior Advisor for Partnerships Jolene Jesse told Government Technology that the partnership will bolster STEM education research projects in the years ahead, with the goal of bringing more female students, students of color and students with disabilities into STEM fields.
“We all said, ‘Here’s an opportunity for us to stimulate the field and think about what this research infrastructure looks like,’” she said. “We came up with the idea to solicit the field and get them to give us proposals on incubators for research infrastructure projects.
“If we want STEM education research that is going to push the field, give us new research evidence and new data that could be used to help improve STEM education research, we might need this kind of infrastructure to build it,” she added. “Together we could offer the field this opportunity to help us conceptualize what that infrastructure might look like, and then hopefully come in with a mid-scale research infrastructure proposal that would then build that infrastructure.”
According to U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics data cited in the announcement, mathematical science occupations in particular were expected to grow by 28 percent between 2014 and 2024. However, it noted that K-12 student outcomes have not kept pace, with federal statistics from 2019, the most recent year available, showing only a third of 8th graders proficient in math.
“When we look at the data, we find that there are whole categories of people who aren’t in the STEM workforce and that aren’t necessarily choosing STEM education, and those groups are pretty well known — they are women and girls, people with disabilities, underrepresented minorities … There are people from rural areas and people from inner-city urban areas that aren’t choosing STEM,” she said. “We need to understand how to tap into this talent pool that hasn’t been recognized, hasn’t been used and hasn’t been attracted to STEM careers.”
Jesse said the first deadline for research proposals is Sept. 1, with plans to make awards available to research projects within the next fiscal year beginning in October and running through Sept. 30.
“We really would love to be able to have a huge, broad impact on science education and STEM education that taps into the innovation enterprise that says, ‘Hey, what do we need to know, and what do we need to do differently?’” she said. “We’re very excited about the partnership. It’s an opportunity for us to work together in ways that I think we’ve always wanted to do … We see partnerships as central to us being able to change things at speed and scale.”
