This grant supports professional development opportunities for graduate teaching assistants in the biology departments at the University of New Mexico and University of Colorado Denver, with a focus on inclusive teaching practices and equitable campus policy and practice. Under the leadership of Samantha Levine, this pilot program will build on learnings from the Student Experience Project, a national collaborative that engaged over 400 college STEM instructors to implement new equity-focused teaching practices in the classroom and measure subsequent changes in student experience and academic outcomes. Specifically, funds will allow Levine’s team to design and pilot training for 20-25 graduate teaching assistants per campus and design mechanisms that provide participants with course credit and/or payment for their participation. The insights gained from this pilot will be disseminated and used to inform similar programs at other higher education institutions.

This grant funds a project led by Nick Hilman at the University of Wisconsin, Madison and Gresham Collom at St. Cloud State University to develop a comprehensive, publicly available dataset and web-based tool detailing current higher education policies and programs that offer financial support for Indigenous students. The dataset will include scholarships, grants, tax subsidies, and other college funding programs, such as tuition-free programs, available exclusively for Indigenous students at the federal, state, and postsecondary system and institutional levels in the United States. These outputs promise to provide an invaluable resource for academics, lawmakers, and tribal representatives alike for understanding the complex landscape of opportunities and obstacles faced by Americas Indigenous population when attempting to access higher education.

This grant provides ongoing support to Marionette Holmes at Spelman College who seeks to increase the number of Black women pursuing economics at the graduate level. is The Spelman College economics department is advancing a set of initiatives designed to instill an interest in economics as a profession and prepare students to succeed in graduate study and economics careers. Grant funds will allow Holmes and her colleagues to continue operating a summer bridge program for incoming freshmen aimed at strengthening participants’ core mathematical competencies; a distinguished speaker series featuring successful women of color who have made a career in economics; initiatives designed to improve the chances of successful application to an economics graduate program, including a journal club, GRE prep training, and a summer program that would provide economics research experience; and facilitated discussions of the challenges faced by women of color. The program will be supplemented with a scholarship fund that will ensure equal access to program offerings regardless of students’ economic circumstances. Grant funds will support these and associated administrative costs for three years.

Funds from this grant provide three years of support to National Public Radio (NPR) for the continued publication and distribution of its acclaimed twice-weekly podcast, Planet Money and its off-shoot, The Indicator, both award-winning projects that examine key economic issues for a general audience in an accurate, accessible, and engaging way. With grant funds, NPR expects to publish over 300 podcast episodes per year--approximately 100 new episodes of Planet Money and 200 new episodes of The Indicator--covering a variety of important, compelling economic issues such as inflation, the ongoing effects of the pandemic on our economy, federal rental assistance, and remote work. Grant funds will also support the annual production of 150 video segments for Planet Money Shorts, an online video series that became the foundation of NPR’s first TikTok account.

This grant provides ongoing support to the Museum of the Moving Image (MoMI) to oversee the administration of the Sloan Grand Jury Prize and Sloan Student Discovery Award, two annual awards celebrating outstanding feature film screenplays that integrate scientific or technological themes or characters. The Sloan Student Grand Jury Prize selects an outstanding screenplay from the Foundation’s six film school partners (American Film Institute; UCLA School of Theater, Film and Television; Carnegie Mellon University School of Drama; Columbia University School of the Arts; NYU Tisch School of the Arts; and USC School of Cinematic Arts), while the Sloan Student Discovery Award selects the best screenplay from another six film schools at top public universities (Brooklyn College Feirstein School of Cinema; SUNY Purchase School of Film and Media Studies; Florida State University; University of Texas Austin; Temple University; and the University of Michigan). Both prizes support the careers of diverse, emerging filmmakers interested in science and technology as they transition out of graduate school and into the film industry. In addition to a $20,000 cash prize, the winners will each receive industry exposure, feedback, and year-round science and film industry mentorship. Grant funds will allow MoMI to continue hosting the awards for two more years.