Federal Agency Updates
Posted April 21, 2021
NSF Robert Noyce Teacher Scholarship Program
The National Science Foundation Robert Noyce Teacher Scholarship Program (Noyce) invites innovative proposals that address the critical need for recruiting, preparing, and retaining highly effective elementary and secondary mathematics and science teachers and teacher leaders in high-need school districts. To achieve this goal, Noyce supports talented science, technology, engineering, and mathematics (STEM) undergraduate majors and professionals to become effective K-12 STEM teachers. It also supports experienced, exemplary K-12 STEM teachers to become teacher leaders in high-need school districts. In addition, Noyce supports research on the effectiveness and retention of K-12 STEM teachers in high-need school districts. Noyce offers four program tracks: Track 1: The Robert Noyce Teacher Scholarships and Stipends (S&S) Track, Track 2: The NSF Teaching Fellowships (TF) Track, Track 3: The NSF Master Teaching Fellowships (MTF) Track, and Track 4: The Noyce Research Track. In addition, Capacity Building proposals are accepted from proposers intending to develop a proposal in any of the program's tracks. Click here for more information.
NSF Improving Undergraduate STEM Education: Education and Human Resources (IUSE:HER)
The fields of science, technology, engineering, and mathematics (STEM) hold much promise as sectors of the economy where we can expect to see continuous vigorous growth in the coming decades. STEM job creation is expected to outpace non-STEM job creation significantly, according to the Commerce Department, reflecting the importance of STEM knowledge to the US economy.
The National Science Foundation (NSF) plays a leadership role in developing and implementing efforts to enhance and improve STEM education in the United States. Through the NSF Improving Undergraduate STEM Education (IUSE) initiative, the agency continues to make a substantial commitment to the highest caliber undergraduate STEM education through a Foundation-wide framework of investments. The IUSE: EHR is a core NSF STEM education program that seeks to promote novel, creative, and transformative approaches to generating and using new knowledge about STEM teaching and learning to improve STEM education for undergraduate students. The program is open to application from all institutions of higher education and associated organizations. NSF places high value on educating students to be leaders and innovators in emerging and rapidly changing STEM fields as well as educating a scientifically literate public. In pursuit of this goal, IUSE: EHR supports projects that seek to bring recent advances in STEM knowledge into undergraduate education, that adapt, improve, and incorporate evidence-based practices into STEM teaching and learning, and that lay the groundwork for institutional improvement in STEM education. In addition to innovative work at the frontier of STEM education, this program also encourages replication of research studies at different types of institutions and with different student bodies to produce deeper knowledge about the effectiveness and transferability of findings.
IUSE: EHR also seeks to support projects that have high potential for broader societal impacts, including improved diversity of students and instructors participating in STEM education, professional development for instructors to ensure adoption of new and effective pedagogical techniques that meet the changing needs of students, and projects that promote institutional partnerships for collaborative research and development. IUSE: EHR especially welcomes proposals that will pair well with the efforts of NSF INCLUDES (https://www.nsf.gov/news/special_reports/nsfincludes/index.jsp) to develop STEM talent from all sectors and groups in our society.
Click here for more information.