STEM, Education, Training

No applicants // Limit: 1 // Tickets Available: 1 

NIFA requests applications for the Higher Education Challenge (HEC) Grants Program for FY 2022 to enable colleges and universities to provide the quality of education necessary to produce baccalaureate or higher degree level graduates capable of strengthening the nation’s food and agricultural scientific and professional workforce.Specifically, applications submitted to this grants program must state how the funded project will address the HEC Program Goals:

1. To strengthen institutional capacities, including curriculum, faculty, scientific instrumentation, instruction delivery systems, and student recruitment and retention, to respond to identified State, regional, national, or international educational needs in the food and agricultural sciences, or in rural economic, community, and business development;
2. To attract and support undergraduate and graduate students in order to educate the students in national need areas of the food and agricultural sciences, or in rural economic, community, and business development;
3. To facilitate cooperative initiatives between two or more eligible institutions, or between eligible institutions and units of State government or organizations in the private sector, to maximize the development and use of resources such as faculty, facilities, and equipment to improve food and agricultural sciences teaching programs, or teaching programs emphasizing rural economic, community, and business development;
4.  To design and implement food and agricultural programs, or programs emphasizing rural economic, community, and business development, to build teaching, research, and extension capacity at colleges and universities having significant minority enrollments;
5.  To conduct undergraduate scholarship programs to meet national and international needs for training food and agricultural scientists and professionals, or professionals in rural economic, community, and business development; and
6. To increase the number and diversity of students who will pursue and complete a postsecondary degree in the food and agricultural sciences.
7. To enhance the quality of instruction for baccalaureate degrees, master’s degrees, and first professional degrees in veterinary sciences, in order to help meet current and future workforce needs in the food and agricultural sciences.
8. To conduct graduate and postdoctoral fellowship programs to attract highly promising individuals to research or teaching careers in the food and agricultural sciences.

Grant Types

1. Planning Activity: Planning Activity Grants support meetings that bring together food and agricultural educators to identify education/teaching needs, update information, or advance an area of education/teaching. Support for a limited number of meetings covering subject matter encompassed by this solicitation will be considered for partial or, if modest, total support. Individual planning activity grants must not exceed $30,000 for up to three years and are not renewable. Indirect costs are not permitted on Planning Activity grant awards. Planning Activity Grants may be used to facilitate strategic planning session(s) required of faculty, industry, professional association, community leaders, or other necessary participants for the specific purpose of developing a formal plan leading to a subsequent submission of a Collaborative Grant as described herein. A Planning Activity grant application may not be submitted in the same year for which a Collaborative Grant application for the same project is also submitted.
    
2. Standard Grant: Standard Grants support targeted original education/teaching projects. An eligible, individual institution, independent branch campus, or branch institution of a State system may submit a grant application for project activities to be undertaken principally on behalf of its own students or faculty, and to be managed primarily by its own personnel. The applicant executes the project without the requirement of sharing grant funds with other project partners. Applicants may request up to $150,000 (total, not per year) for a Standard Grant application.
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3. Collaborative Grants: Collaborative Grants support projects with at least one additional partner or a multi-partner approach to enhance education/teaching programs. Collaborative Grants should build linkages to generate a critical mass of expertise, skill, and technology to address education/teaching programs related to the food and agricultural sciences. Grants can reduce duplication of efforts and/or build capacity and should be organized and led by a strong applicant with documented project management knowledge and skills to organize and carry out the initiative.

• Collaborative Grant Type 1 (CG1) (Applicant + One Partner): Applicants may request up to $300,000 (total, not per year) for a CG1 project. In this type of project, the applicant executes the project with assistance from one additional partner. The partners must share grant funds. Specifically, the applicant institution will transfer at least one- half of the awarded funds to the other institution participating in the project.
   
• Collaborative Grant Type 2 (CG2) (Applicant + Two or more Partners): Applicants may request up to $750,000 (total, not per year) for a CG2 project. The applicant executes the project with assistance from at least two additional partners. The additional partners must share grant funds. The applicant institution/organization submitting a CG2 proposal must retain at least 30 per cent, but not more than 70 percent of the awarded funds and no cooperating entity may receive less than 10 percent of awarded funds. A CG2 project differs from a CG1 in project scope and impact. CG2 projects must support a multi- partner approach to solving a major state or regional challenge in food and agricultural sciences education at the baccalaureate, masters or DVM level. CG2 projects are characterized by multiple partners (each providing a specific expertise) organized and led by a strong applicant with documented project management knowledge and skills to organize and carry out the initiative.

S.E. Jung

J. Denno

No applicants // Limit: 1* // Tickets Available: 1 

*There are no restrictions or limits on Pilot or Implementation proposals. Institutions are limited to one CIP proposal per CyberTraining program competition. Only submit to this internal competition if you are planning a CIP proposal. 

This program seeks to prepare, nurture, and grow the national scientific research workforce for creating, utilizing, and supporting advanced cyberinfrastructure (CI) to enable and potentially transform fundamental science and engineering (S&E) research and education and contribute to the Nation's overall economic competitiveness and security. The goals of this solicitation are to (i) ensure broad adoption of CI tools, methods, and resources by the research community in order to catalyze major research advances and to enhance researchers' abilities to lead the development of new CI; (ii) integrate core literacy and discipline-appropriate advanced skills in advanced CI as well as computational and data-driven methods for advancing fundamental research, into the Nation's undergraduate and graduate educational curriculum/instructional materials; and (iii) build communities of research CI professional staff to deploy, manage, and collaboratively support the effective use of research CI, as well as establish career paths for those staff within and across institutions and science and engineering (S&E) disciplines. Proposals responding to the Pilot and Implementation project classes defined in this solicitation may target one or both of the first two solicitation goals, while proposals responding to the CIP project class must address the third goal. For the purpose of this solicitation, advanced CI is broadly defined as the set of resources, tools, methods, and services for advanced computation, large-scale data handling and analytics, and networking and security for large-scale systems that collectively enable potentially transformative fundamental S&E research and education.

This solicitation calls for innovative, scalable training, education, and curriculum/instructional materials, along with deeper incorporation of CI professionals into the research enterprise — targeting one or more of the solicitation goals — to address emerging needs and unresolved bottlenecks in S&E research workforce development, from the postsecondary level to active researchers to CI professionals. The funded activities, spanning targeted, multidisciplinary communities, should lead to transformative changes in the state of research workforce preparedness for advanced CI-enabled research in the short- and long-term. This solicitation also seeks to broaden CI access and adoption by (i) increasing adoption of advanced CI and of computational and data-driven methods to a broader range of S&E disciplines and institutions; (ii) enhancing the incorporation of CI professionals into the research enterprise – highlighting the value of those professionals in S&E research; and (iii) effectively utilizing the capabilities of individuals from a diverse set of underrepresented groups. Proposals from, and in partnership with, the aforementioned communities are especially encouraged.

C. Waite

UArizona may submit one proposal.

Review and selection of the UArizona institutional submission will be determined by UA Foundation and RII Leadership. Only pre-proposals for the Large Grant – from $100,000 to $1,000,000 – will be accepted for this internal competition.

The Mission of Angel Charity for Children, Inc. (a 501(c)(3)) is to improve the quality of life for children in our community. This is accomplished through an established program of fundraising for the beneficiary(ies) selected annually by the General Membership. It is our hope that the community supports the mission of Angel Charity until all the needs of Pima County’s children have been met.

No applicants // Limit: 1 // Tickets Available: 1 

Community Anchor Awards for TEAM II (ANCHR) will provide financial support of between $35K-$40K total to cover activities for a period of one to two years that allow IEIs strengthen their service as a local NASA STEM informal education community resource, implement authentic NASA STEM experiences that benefit a significant population of diverse audiences in their local community or region, and participate in the NASA Informal Education (IE) Learning Cohort.

Ticket #1: M. Chertkov
Ticket #2: C. Atkins

UArizona may participate in two Innovations in Graduate Education (IGE) proposals per competition. Participation includes serving as a lead organization on a non-collaborative proposal or as a lead organization, non-lead organization, or subawardee on a collaborative proposal.

The Innovations in Graduate Education (IGE) program is designed to encourage the development and implementation of bold, new, and potentially transformative approaches to STEM graduate education training. The program seeks proposals that explore ways for graduate students in research-based master's and doctoral degree programs to develop the skills, knowledge, and competencies needed to pursue a range of STEM careers.

IGE focuses on projects aimed at piloting, testing, and validating innovative and potentially transformative approaches to graduate education. IGE projects are intended to generate the knowledge required for their customization, implementation, and broader adoption. The program supports testing of novel models or activities with high potential to enrich and extend the knowledge base on effective graduate education approaches.

The program addresses both workforce development, emphasizing broad participation, and institutional capacity-building needs in graduate education. Strategic collaborations with the private sector, non-governmental organizations (NGOs), government agencies, national laboratories, field stations, teaching and learning centers, informal science centers, and academic partners are encouraged.

Ticket #1: T. Hodges
Ticket #2: A. Dhar
Ticket #3: A. Lesenne

UArizona may submit three applications. The primary goal of the From Learning to Leading: Cultivating the Next Generation of Diverse Food and Agriculture Professionals Program (NEXTGEN) is to enable 1890 institutions, 1994 institutions, Alaska Native-serving institutions and Native Hawaiian-serving institutions, Hispanic-serving institutions (specifically, the certified Hispanic-serving agricultural colleges and universities (HSACUs)), and insular area institutions of higher education located in the U.S. territories to build and sustain the next generation of the food, agriculture, natural resources, and human sciences (FANH) workforce including the future USDA workforce primarily through providing student scholarship support, meaningful paid internships, fellowships, and job opportunity matching, and also facilitating opportunities to learn the processes and pathways leading to training and employment in the federal sector.

Contact RDS for more information

11/22/2022 UPDATE: NSF is not accepting applications under 22-527 and "This program is currently waiting for a new publication." RDS will be working with NSF to determine the next steps and will announce those on the LS Table once full guidelines are available. Thank you.

Previous guidance related to the 22-527 solicitation:
Per the UArizona Limited Submissions process, RII is prioritizing competitive resubmissions for 2023 should institutional eligibility be confirmed. At this time there will be no internal competition for the two institutional submissions.

Per guidelines in the 2022 solicitation, UArizona will not be eligible to apply for this program again until 2023 at the earliest. The guidelines note that: Institutions with a current S-STEM award should wait at least until the end of the third year of execution of their current award before submitting a new S-STEM proposal focused on students pursuing the same discipline(s). As UArizona has a current S-STEM, the Pima-UAZ STEM Bridge Program, that encompasses all S-STEM disciplines our earliest opportunity to apply for any discipline will be March 2023. Priority is given to single discipline. 

R. Sorenson