This grant supports the American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS) to design, launch, and facilitate a learning community for grantees in Sloan’s Creating Equitable Pathways to STEM Graduate Education initiative, which seeks to develop pathways for Black, Indigenous, and Latina/o/x students from Minority Serving Institutions to STEM graduate programs across the country. Grant funds will allow AAAS to integrate Sloan grantees into the organization’s successful SEA Change initiative, which aims to make diversity, equity, and inclusion normative in STEM higher education through a proven model of systemic reform. Activities delivered through the AAAS “Port of Call” platform will support Sloan principal investigators and their project teams in reaching their project goals. Such activities include community discussion groups; quarterly video conferences; up to four live courses per year; and various forms of engagement with fellow Sloan grantees, SEA Change members, AAAS staff, and leading experts in the field. In-person networking will be facilitated via an annual grantee meeting adjacent to existing AAAS programming, and grantees will be invited to attend award ceremonies, networking receptions, and other events at the AAAS annual meeting.

This grant provides support for the Equity in Graduate Education Consortium, led by Dr. Julie Posselt at the University of Southern California’s Pullias Center for Higher Education. The Consortium brings together change-ready universities, graduate programs, and leaders to align policies and practices with commitments to equity and inclusion. Building off the successful California Consortium for Inclusive Doctoral Education (C-CIDE),  grant funds will allow Posselt’s team to develop a tiered membership model for the expanded consortium; host activities, including a workshop series and training for campus-based facilitators; create new modules, curricula, and facilitation guides; develop a framework for enacting systemic change in graduate education; and work with their new and existing institutional partners to create equity action plans tailored to the needs and circumstances of each university. In addition to other public and private universities, participating campuses include Sloan’s University Centers of Exemplary Mentoring institutions.

The Sloan University Centers for Exemplary Mentoring (UCEM) initiative is a series of grants to universities around the country that are working to transform graduate education to better attract, enroll, and graduate Black, Indigenous, and Latina/o/x doctoral students in STEM fields. Grant funds primarily provide direct support to graduate students to be used in support of their studies. The remaining funds support a diverse and interrelated set of activities and resources designed to create an equitable, inclusive, and supportive educational environment conducive to successful doctoral completion and subsequent career success. The National Action Council for Minorities in Engineering acts as the Foundation’s partner and fiscal steward for the program. This grant provides three years of continued support to the UCEMs housed at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign and the University of California, San Diego.

This grant supports Joseph Brewer and a largely Indigenous-led project team at the University of Kansas (KU) to improve Indigenous representation in the STEM professoriate and workforce by piloting a Sloan Indigenous Graduate Partnership (SIGP) program at their university. SIGP is a coalition of nine higher education institutions devoted to creating and sustaining inclusive, connected, and supportive educational environments conducive to successful advanced degree completion and subsequent career success for Indigenous students. Brewer and project team member Melinda Adams are themselves SIGP alumni. Grant funds will support the Kansas team in providing robust funding packages for SIGP Sloan Scholars; developing and offering training and resources to university faculty to improve their skills and abilities in mentoring Indigenous students; creating a supportive community for Indigenous graduate students, and establishing and broadening support networks for all Indigenous students at KU; and engaging with the national SIGP team to support the adoption of best practices for supporting Indigenous students. A central feature of the project is the development of a Sloan Undergraduate Scholars Program via KU’s existing partnership with Haskell Indian Nations University (HINU). This partnership will bolster efforts to connect STEM-specific pathways between HINU and KU and facilitate a near-peer mentoring program, with SIGP scholars at KU serving as mentors to SUSP scholars at HINU.