The Institute for International Education’s Scholar Rescue Fund rescues endangered scholars from any country and discipline in the world and relocates them to a safe haven where they can continue their work as teachers, researchers, writers, and intellectuals. To date, the Fund has rescued and awarded academic fellowships to 681 threatened scholars from 56 countries and relocated them to safety in 360 partner institutions in 42 countries, including such U.S. universities as Stanford, Columbia, Harvard, Cornell, and the University of Michigan. These academics have gone on to publish thousands of books and journal articles, often including groundbreaking research; they have filed dozens of scientific patents, attended thousands of academic conferences, and taught thousands of students. This grant provides support to the Scholar Rescue Fund for the rescue and safe relocation of 25 endangered scholars from STEM disciplines over the next three years.

This grant continues three years of funding for the University Center of Exemplary Mentoring (UCEM) at the University of South Florida (USF). UCEMs provide scholarships and support services to STEM Ph.D. students who identify as African American/black, Hispanic/Latinx, or American Indian/Alaska Native and who are U.S. citizens. Supported students, known as Sloan Scholars, receive a $40,000 stipend, a standard doctoral student support package, and are eligible to participate in a host of professional development and mentoring opportunities designed to maximize the chances of succeeding in graduate study. For each supported student, UCEMs provide a full doctoral support package to a second minority student through an institutional matching program. In addition to scholarships, grants funds will support the continuation, expansion, and improvement of a host of recruitment, retention, and student support activities, including production of an operational manual of recruitment and retention processes and activities, further development of USF’s multidimensional mentoring model, and programs to help coordinate activities between Sloan Scholars in USF’s Engineering School with those in its College of Marine Sciences.

Funds from this grant provide scholarships to three years of cohorts of M.S. and Ph.D. students participating in the Sloan Indigenous Graduate Partnership. Supported students are American Indian or Alaska Native scholars enrolled in graduate degree programs in STEM fields at one of the SIGP’s four participating campus systems: Purdue University, the University of Alaska (Anchorage and Fairbanks), the University of Arizona, and the Montana University System (University of Montana, Montana State University, and Montana Tech). Recruitment targets for the next three period include 20 new Native American Ph.D. students and 59 Native American master’s students, of whom 47 will be funded through Sloan funds and 12 will supported by matching funds from SIGP schools. Additional funds support administrative and financial management services provided by NACME, including processing of scholarship applications, EFT forms, and scholarship payments to three new cohorts of SIGP students; tracking scholars’ progression to graduation and recording first employment; participating in select AISES conferences where SIGP program meetings take place; maintaining working relationships with SIGP students, program directors, and program staff at all participating campuses; and reporting twice annually to Sloan on recruitment, retention, and graduation data.

Funds from this grant support efforts to coordinate activities between the four campus systems of the Sloan Indigenous Graduate Partnership (SIGP): the University of Arizona, Purdue University, the University of Alaska (Anchorage and Fairbanks), and the Montana University System (University of Montana, Montana State University, and Montana Tech). Goals for the SIGP over the three year grant period include recruitment of 20 new Native American Ph.D. students and 59 Native American M.S. students, an increase in the visibility of SIGP as a national resource for institutions seeking to improve Native American graduate student success in STEM fields; growth in the number of faculty (Native and non-Native) who are knowledgeable about the best practices for mentoring Native students, maintenance of high retention and graduation rates for students in the program, and improved engagement and presence of the SIGP on social media.  Grant funds support administrative and programmatic expenses associated with these goals. Funds for student scholarships over this period are provided through a separate grant to the National Action Council for Minorities in Engineering (NACME).

This grant supports efforts by Vicki Grassian, Distinguished Professor of Physical Chemistry at the University of California, San Diego, to monitor the chemistry that occurs on indoor surfaces. Grassian and her team will compare surface adsorption and surface reactions (kinetics, extent of reaction) over a range of different types of material surfaces found in homes, offices, and public spaces, including glass (windows), titanium dioxide (paints and self-cleaning surfaces), concrete, and drywall. She will conduct these experiments on model systems to better understand the chemistry of these materials, as well as on surfaces coated with thin films to determine if they behave differently. Gases of interest include ozone, nicotine, cyclomethylsiloxanes (components of personal care products), ammonia, and co-mixtures of these. In addition, Grassian will conduct a series of controlled experiments that vary the relative humidity, temperature, and light surfaces are exposed to, and measure how chemical reaction mechanisms and reaction kinetics vary across cases. An important aspect of this research is to understand how these factors drive the chemistry of indoor surfaces with gases present in indoor environments. They plan to probe the molecular processes that occur on these indoor surfaces using molecular-based probes such as X-ray photoelectron spectroscopy, vibrational spectroscopy, and scanning probe techniques such as atomic force microscopy. This project will characterize many of the physical and chemical transformations taking place on indoor surfaces and generate new data for indoor chemistry models. This proposal will provide a molecular-level understanding of chemistry on indoor surfaces as affected by important factors such as organic coatings, light, and relative humidity. The results will be shared through peer-reviewed publications and presentations at conferences and meetings. At least two students and one postdoc will be trained.