Embargoed until: September 30, 1998 NSF PR 98-60
Media contact: K. Lee Herring, (703) 306-1070, [email protected]
Program contact: Lawrence Goldberg (703) 306-1339, [email protected]
NSF AWARDS GRANTS FOR INTEGRATIVE INNOVATION IN GRADUATE EDUCATION
The National Science Foundation (NSF) today announced the awarding of $40.5 million over five years to 17 doctorate-granting institutions to promote integrative graduate education and research training. These training grants are intended to produce a diverse group of engineers and scientists well-prepared for a broad spectrum of emerging career opportunities in industry, government and academe.
NSF's Integrative Graduate Education and Research Traineeship (IGERT) grants will provide students with an in-depth, multidisciplinary education through coursework and research experience. In addition, career development will be emphasized by the high priority placed on students' communication and teamwork skills, experience with modern instrumentation, responsible conduct of research and international awareness.
"A new pedagogical approach is needed to meet the needs of tomorrow's Ph.D.s," said NSF acting deputy director Joseph Bordogna. "As well as being astute in a discipline, they must also be prepared to address intellectual issues that transcend disciplinary boundaries, since much new knowledge is increasingly created at the interfaces of traditional disciplines. The IGERT investment is an attempt to develop educational models toward this end, with a direct focus on the integration of education and research," he said.
The resulting programs will also offer experiences relevant to both academic and non-academic careers by linking graduate research with research in industry, national laboratories, and other non-academic settings.
NSF's Assistant Director of Education and Human Resources, Luther Williams, described the agency-wide program as being consistent with NSF's overall education agenda to encourage change at all levels of science, mathematics, engineering, and technology education. "IGERT is the first NSF program to demonstrate concretely NSF's strategic goal to integrate education and research at the graduate level, consistent with the National Science Board's commitment," Williams noted of the Board's recent recommendation on graduate education. "Further, through collaborations between academe and industry, graduates will be well-positioned to take the lead in facing multidisciplinary challenges of the future," he said.
IGERT also responds, in part, to recommendations of the National Academy of Science's Committee on Science, Engineering, and Public Policy (COSEPUP), whose 1995 report, Reshaping the Graduate Education of Scientists and Engineers, advised repairing the "misalignment" between how graduate students are trained and what employers seek. COSEPUP identified communication and teamwork skills, multidisciplinary and applied research experience, and adaptability as essential elements in training.
Graduate students supported under these traineeships will be exposed to multidisciplinary graduate programsædeveloped by the awardee institutionsæin emerging areas of science and engineering, areas that penetrate traditional boundaries and unite faculty from several departments and/or institutions. Supported projects are based upon a multidisciplinary research theme and organized around a diverse group of investigators from U.S. doctorate-granting institutions.
In addition to NSF's Office of Polar Programs and institutions in EPSCoR (Experimental Program to Stimulate Competitive Research), all NSF directorates are participating in the IGERT program.
-NSF-
Attachment: List of Integrative Graduate Education Research Grants
Editors: For more details about IGERT see: http://www.nsf.gov/igert/
Integrative Graduate Education and Research Grants (1998)
This listing of the first round of IGERT awards includes award number, principal investigator, institution, and title. Abstracts can be accessed by award number on the world-wide web at: http://www.nsf.gov/verity/srchawdf.htm
Number Investigator Institution Title 9870665 Dana Z. Anderson Univ. of Colorado-Boulder Graduate Training in (contact: Jim Scott/303-492-3114) Optical Science and
Engineering
9870720 Gregory W. Auner Wayne State Univ. Smart Sensors and (contact: Tom Tigani/313-577-2150) Integrated Devices
9870691 Leonaidas G. Bachas Univ. of KY Res. Foundation Integrated Sensing (contact: Carl Nathe/606-257-1754) Architectures
9870710 Charles DeLisi Boston University Graduate Research (contact: Joan Schwartz/(617-353-4626) Training in Bioinformatics
9870711 Joseph S. Devinny Univ. of Southern California Urban Environmental (contact: Bob Calverley/213-740-2215) Sustainability: A
Multidisciplinary Doctoral
Education Program
9870633 Timothy J. Ebner Univ. of MN-Twin Cities Integrative Graduate (contact: Teri Charest/612-624-4604) Training of Neuroscientists
and Computational/
Physical Scientists
9870676 Mark E. Johnson Brown Univ. Learning and Action in the (contact: Kristen Lans/401-863-7508) Face of Uncertainty:
Cognitive, Computational
and Statistical Approaches
9870668 David M. Mark SUNY-Buffalo Integrated Graduate (contact: Ellen Goldbaum/716-645-2626) Education and Research
Training in Geographic
Information Science
9870682 Patricia Mokhtarian Univ. of California-Davis Transportation Technology (contact: Sylvia Wright/530-752-7704) and Policy Program
9870703 Peter J. Nowak Univ. of Wisconsin-Madison Human Dimensions of (contact: Jeff Iseminger/608-262-8287) Social and Aquatic System
Interactions
9870653 Rebecca Richards-Kortum Univ. of Texas-Austin A New Pathway for (contact: Robert Meckel/512-475-7847) Multidisciplinary Graduate
Education in Optical
Molecular Bio-engineering
9870717 Jin-Joo Song Oklahoma State Univ. Advanced Graduate (contact: Nestor Gonzales/405-744-6260) Training in Photonics
Research
9870713 James T. Staley Univ. of Washington Astrobiology: Life in and (contact: Vince Stricherz/206-543-2580) Beyond Earth's Solar
System
9870631 Steven H. Strogatz Cornell Univ. Program in Nonlinear (contact: Bill Steele/607-255-7164) Systems
9870659 Michael Tabor Univ. of Arizona Multidisciplinary Training (contact: Julieta Gonzales/520-626-4336) at the Interface of Biology,
Mathematics and Physics
9870646 Thomas L. Theis Clarkson Univ. Environmental (contact: Michael Griffin/315-268-6481) Manufacturing
Management
9870661 William J. Wilson Harvard Univ. Multidisciplinary Program (contact: Susan Green/617-495-1585) in Inequality and Social Policy
RSS