This three-year grant supports the launch of a major initiative by the Council of Graduate Schools (CGS) to assist graduate students to gain knowledge in the assessment of student learning, both for the improvement of their own course-based teaching and for the reflective analysis of student learning outcomes at the level of a program or major. Partnering with five universities, CGS will partner with five universities to develop programs aimed at training graduate students in the best practices for assessing student learning and in implementing these practices in their courses, with special attention paid to large "gateway" science and math courses with high student attrition. Grant funds will also support three annual meetings and 2 summer workshops where learning assessment will be discussed, and a web-based clearinghouse for resources on the topic.

The National Action Council for Minorities in Engineering (NACME) has been the Foundation's longtime partner in its grantmaking in the Education for Underrepresented Groups program, administering both the Sloan Minority Ph.D. program and the Sloan Indigenous Graduate Partnership. NACME receives applications from 53 departments at the 34 universities participating in these programs, selects students for scholarships, administers awards, and supports recruitment efforts by faculty. The grant funds new obligations in these programs for the 2012-2013 academic year, including scholarships, recruiting support, and administrative costs.

This grant will fund a project by the National Opinion Research Center (NORC) to evaluate the impact of the Foundation's Minority Ph.D. program. NORC will survey faculty at all 53 departments participating in the Minority Ph.D. program as well as all currently-enrolled graduate students supported through the program, and will attempt to track down and survey every former participant of these departments (whether with Ph.D. in hand or not) to determine what they did after their first job and where they are now. NORC will also track and survey Sloan-funded Ph.D. recipients from departments that once but no longer participate in the Minority Ph.D. program. NORC will then analyze these surveys to provide a complete picture of the career outcomes of all Ph.D. graduates who had received some part of their fellowship funding from Sloan. The output of this project will contribute to the evaluation of and improvements to the structure and performance of the Minority Ph.D. program.