This grant supports a partnership involving two minority serving institutions and one community college: University of Washington Tacoma (an Asian American and Native American Pacific Islander Serving Institution), Morgan State University (a Historically Black University), and Tacoma Community College. The partnership seeks to provide pathways to graduate education in computer science and engineering for underrepresented students. Grant funds will allow the partnership to develop a mentoring-driven, course-based undergraduate research experience (M-CURE), to provide research and learning experiences, structured mentoring, and compensation for participating students. Specifically, this grant will allow the team to develop the program’s structure; create faculty training materials; form faculty teams leading cross-institutional projects; identify faculty members to teach the mentoring course at each institution, with an emphasis on women and Black, Indigenous, and Latina/o faculty members; identify other institutions that may serve as future partners; and meet with an advisory board to relay progress and receive guidance.

This grant supports a masters-to-doctorate bridge program between the chemistry departments at North Carolina Central University (NCCU; a Historically Black University) and the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill (UNC) designed to increase the numbers of Black/African American students who earn advanced degrees in chemistry. Grant funds will be used to provide team mentoring, wherein each student will be assigned a mentoring team comprising three faculty members from each institution; academic support, including regular check-ins with students on academic standing and course selection; research opportunities, wherein students will be given guidance in their master’s thesis research and be paired with graduate scholars to learn hands-on research techniques and methods; course sharing opportunities, wherein students will be encouraged to take courses at UNC that are not otherwise offered at NCCU; community building through various informal events; and professional development opportunities, wherein students will develop research presentations with their mentors and present them across the college, with the goal of presenting them at a national conference.

This grant supports a partnership between Arizona State University (ASU; an American Indian and Alaska Native Serving Institution) and Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory (Berkeley Lab), facilitating pathways for American Indian students to Ph.D. programs. Specifically, the ASU-Berkeley Lab STEM Pathways (ABSP) Program seeks to establish a cohort-based pathways model including an 8-10 week summer research placement with the Berkeley Lab for 3 students in year 1 and 5 students in year 2; a mentoring network that will see students paired with a Berkeley Lab mentor and steering committee member, with weekly check-ins throughout the summer experience; and a comprehensive approach including educational seminars, scientific research training, presentations from Berkeley Lab staff, and facility tours to see and learn about various labs and their research.

This grant supports a partnership between the University of Texas Rio Grande Valley (UTRGV; a Hispanic Serving Institution) and the University of Texas Dallas (UTD; a predominantly white institution), which seeks to increase the number of Hispanic Ph.D. recipients in the mathematical sciences. UTRGV and UTD have been co-teaching courses since 2017, and grant funds will be used to expand this effort by recruiting and selecting participants for an 8-week summer research experience for UTRGV undergraduates that includes graduate preparation programming; establishing a bridge program for incoming graduate students that offers advanced mathematics preparatory coursework; developing a multifaceted support structure for students, which includes layered faculty and peer support and regular check-ins with students; and leveraging the partnership to inform the development of UTRGV’s mathematics doctoral program and to inform how UTD can best support incoming Hispanic students.