Communications of the ACM
How New COMPETES Science Law Broadens NSF Education Programs
"We appreciate the outside recognition for the idea that enhancing STEM education is an NSF-wide responsibility," says Joan Ferrini-Mundy, head of the National Science Foundation's education directorate.
Credit: AAAS
The reauthorization of the America COMPETES Act outlines program changes designed to guarantee that all the elements of the U.S. National Science Foundation (NSF) are involved in training the next generation of researchers and enhancing public scientific literacy.
Among the new law's requirements for NSF are increasing the allowance to universities that host recipients of NSF's graduate research fellowships and receive funding to operate an NSF graduate traineeship program; splitting the cost of its two graduate training programs equally between the education directorate and the six research directorates; halting a planned merger of three programs aimed at buttressing undergraduate science and engineering programs at colleges with a large portion of minority students; and supporting undergraduate research mainly through its regular application process. The reauthorization also instructs NSF to initiate new education projects, including a replication of the University of Texas, Austin's UTEACH program to train science, technology, engineering, and mathematics (STEM) majors to become public school science and math teachers.
NSF officials say they are already following many of COMPETES' directives. "We appreciate the outside recognition for the idea that enhancing STEM education is an NSF-wide responsibility," says NSF's Joan Ferrini-Mundy. "And COMPETES offers some wonderful opportunities for us to expand that conversation."
From Science Insider
View Full Article
Abstracts Copyright © 2011 Information Inc., Bethesda, Maryland, USA 
No entries found