Funds from this grant support the National Action Council for Minorities in Engineering (NACME) in its role as the Alfred P. Sloan Foundation’s administrative partner for the University Centers of Exemplary Mentoring (UCEM), Sloan Indigenous Graduate Partnership (SIGP), and Sloan Centers for Systemic Change (SCSC) signature initiatives. NACME provides grants management, scholarship disbursement, and programmatic design and oversight for UCEM and SIGP campuses, including high-touch interaction with Sloan Scholars and program grantees. NACME also collects, compiles, and analyzes program data, including data on Sloan Scholar demographics, recruitment, retention, and graduation outcomes. Other grant funds support community engagement activities, including the design and oversight of programming offered at the annual SREB Institute on Teaching and Mentoring and coordinated engagement with the Sloan Scholars Mentoring Network.

This grant to University of Southern California’s Pullias Center for Higher Education funds its Equity in Graduate Education (EGE) Consortium which will provide strategic support for 10 Sloan Centers for Systemic Change (SCSC). Participation in the EGE will equip SCSC project teams with data, tools, and change management strategies to achieve systemic change. The EGE Consortium model is one of cohort-based learning within and across universities through a “networked improvement community” approach. Campus teams develop and implement action plans that create ongoing systems of faculty and other forms of development. Teams are typically made up of 6-10 people, including 2-3 liaisons to consortium leadership who act as point persons and a conduit for the professional development that EGE provides its campuses. Funded activities include virtual workshops, bi-monthly liaison meetings, and an in-person meeting for campus liaisons. Up to six hours of individualized coaching/consultation is available to each team. A “train-the-trainer” model is employed such that liaisons host their own campus workshops for faculty, staff, and students using material developed by EGE. Each SCSC campus will enroll in one of three “tracks” to focus their professional development and institutional change efforts, selecting from 1) Admissions & Recruitment, 2) Mentoring & Wellbeing, and 3) Equitable Selection Systems. The tracks will be developed, refined, and delivered in collaboration with content experts complementary of the EGE leadership team.

This grant provides three years of partial, continued support to the Sloan University Center of Exemplary Mentoring (UCEM) at Duke University. The UCEM theory of change posits that through financial support, strong mentoring, supportive community, and institutional commitment, students in STEM can thrive and institutions can change graduate science and engineering education in ways that make it more welcoming, inclusive, and equitable for all. In addition to providing core support for the Duke UCEM, grant funds will enable the university to advance recruitment efforts and foster new partnerships with Minority Serving Institutions; strengthen student support with an emphasis on multi-level mentoring, student mental health and well-being, and the cultivation of new faculty champions; and identify resources and approaches to sustain and institutionalize the UCEM and its work beyond Sloan funding. Grant funds will be administered by the National Action Council for Minorities in Engineering, the Foundation’s administrative partner for the UCEM program.  

Funds from this grant support student scholarships at six Sloan Indigenous Graduate Partnership (SIGP) campuses between 2024-2028: University of Arizona, University of Kansas, University of Montana, Montana State University, Purdue University, and the State University of New York College of Environmental Science and Forestry. As the Foundation’s administrative partner, NACME distributes the scholarship funds and provides other, related support (e.g., verifying student eligibility, tracking account balances, reporting to the Foundation, etc.).

This grant renews support for the Sloan Indigenous Graduate Partnership (SIGP), one of the Foundation’s signature initiatives focused on advancing Indigenous perspectives and scholarship in STEM graduate education. The grant will support six graduate campuses (University of Arizona, University of Kansas, University of Montana, Montana State University, Purdue University, and the State University of New York College of Environmental Science and Forestry), and three undergraduate partner campuses (Haskell Indian Nations University, University of North Carolina Asheville, and Western Carolina University). Kevin Gibson of Purdue oversees the national program and coordinates cross-campus activities. The SIGP model is focused on interventions in four key areas of graduate education: recruitment and admission, mentoring and advocacy, community-building, and student funding. The program further seeks to transform graduate STEM education in ways that support: 1) the inclusion of Indigenous perspectives, knowledge, values and experiences in STEM research, teaching, and engagement, 2) the ability for scholars to address issues relevant to Indigenous communities and issues, and 3) the improvement of student outcomes and contribution to a sense of belonging through a cohort model and strong emphasis on community engagement. A key feature of the program is Sloan-supported scholarships for SIGP Sloan Scholars. Sloan funds (administered via a separate grant to NACME) provide M.S. students $22,000 over two years and PhD students $44,000 over four years. Grant funds are used as “top-off” dollars, with campuses providing a full financial package to both M.S. and Ph.D. students. Other key features of SIGP programming include engagement with the Sloan Scholars Mentoring Network for SIGP alumni and implementation of a competitive seed grant program for scholars seeking funds to support research with and inside Indigenous communities.

A nation’s industrial strategy consists of state interventions to support specific industries that are deemed strategically important. Such policies can help to correct externalities and coordination failures as well as provide key public goods. One example is the investment made by the Department of Defense’s research and development organization, the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA), in the experimental computer network ARPANET – the precursor to the internet – in the late 1960s. The undertaking was too costly, risky, and uncertain for any private sector actor to undertake. But once in place, companies joined in and the internet as we know it is the result. The theoretical and empirical economics literature on industrial strategy is still underdeveloped, not least because the Washington Consensus that emerged during the 1980s favored free-market policies and limited government interference as drivers of economic growth. Times have changed, however, with recent geopolitical challenges pushing industrial strategy back into the foreground of economic policy discussions worldwide. A growing body of empirical research suggests that well-designed industrial strategy can effectively drive economic growth, while ongoing studies explore why particular types of policies function better in some settings than others and how industrial strategy has changed over time. At the field’s forefront are early-career scholars Reka Juhasz (University of British Columbia) and Nathan Lane (University of Oxford).  Together, they founded the Industrial Policy Group (IPG), an international empirical economics lab devoted to this topic.  The IPG uses large-language models to classify policies in ways that enable cross-country comparison and rigorous econometric analysis. They plan to publish their comprehensive, granular, and standardized dataset and demonstrate its usefulness in proof-of-concept research on how industrial policies are used around the world. They will also complete at least four other projects, including a descriptive paper on the political economy of industrial strategy; a methods paper on measuring industrial policies from news text; and two evaluation papers on the efficacy of industrial strategy in East Asia after World War II and globally after the year 2000.  The PIs’ demonstrated commitment to fostering a highly diverse, inclusive, and collaborative culture will also ensure that a growing number of graduate students will receive high-quality mentorship, training, and co-authorship through their involvement in these projects.