Higher Education is also targeted for cuts, including but not limited to institutional improvement, research, and innovative technology programs. State colleges and universities, as well as minority-serving institutions, will be most impacted. The $9.2 billion in cuts represent a 13.5% drop from the U.S. Department of Education’s 2017 budget of $68.2 billion.

The following are examples of the key programs to be impacted, with deep cuts for K-12 and higher education:

• Programs for disadvantaged children to pay for school choice, including Title I funding that pays for services for low-income students, will see $1 billion in cuts to pay for a new school-choice program.
• Programs for innovation and competition will be cut in order to direct those funds to school voucher incentives. The existing program called Investing in Innovation, which is geared to assisting states experimenting with new educational approaches, would instead encourage states to create or expand school voucher programs.
• ThePublic Service Loan Program and federally subsidized student loans would be eliminated, and students would have to pay interest on the money they borrowed from the federal government, even while in school.
• Many other initiatives such as the Alaska Native Education, comprehensive and innovative literacy, enrichment and strengthening of instruction, preschool development grants, and international education and foreign language programs, both domestic and overseas, are on the chopping block for over $3 billion.
• In other cuts, low-income students and their families who depend on the federal government for help accessing healthcare, food, and shelter will see a budget cut of $193 billion in food stamp dollars. This will also have an impact on education and learning.

It is crucial that we convey to our representatives what we believe is essential to assure that our schools, students, and teachers are protected and can continue to deliver top level education and a chance at upward mobility for all students. Knowing what is in jeopardy and how it may affect you and future generations is the first step. Making your voice known to your representatives would be the next.

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Some of the most dramatic cuts by category are:

Arts and Humanities:

The budget plan proposes to eliminate entirely the National Endowment for the Arts (NEA) and severely cut the existing $148 million budget of the National Endowment for the Humanities (NEH). This will mean that 40% of the NEA funds that are channeled to states and matched will no longer offer real participation to those who otherwise have no avenue to music and the arts in their communities. “The hope that comes from creativity in these low-income communities will be obliterated.” (Washington Post, 3/23/2017).

“One common comparison we’ve seen says that Melania Trump’s security detail at Trump Tower costs more than the annual budget for the National Endowment for the Arts.” (Linda Qiu on Wednesday, February 8th, 2017, PUNDITFACT).

Sciences and Higher Education:

• The Agriculture Department budget eliminates the $500 million Water and Wastewater loan and grant program.
• The Commerce Department budget eliminates the $73 million Sea Grant program, which operates in conjunction with universities in 33 states.
• The Department of Energy is to eliminate $900 million in Office of Science funding.
• The Environmental Protection Agency is to cut the Office of Research and Development funding in half.

A drastic cut of 18% or $5.8 billion is looming over the National Institutes of Health (NIH). This would severely reduce the funding NIH gives out to researchers around the globe, and reductions are slated for intramural and extramural research, and complete elimination the Fogarty International Center, which builds partnerships between the US and international institutions.

Although NASA will take a small cut of 1%, the Experimental Program to Stimulate Competitive Research (EPSCoR), which supports science and technology research and development at colleges and universities in areas such as remote sensing, nanotechnology, astrophysics and aeronautics, will be eliminated.

These cuts range from higher education, to research and innovation, to incentives for younger researchers who are beginning their careers. It is the young investigators who will be most affected. As competition increases they will be pitted against their older and more experienced colleagues. Most importantly, the research that makes the US competitive on the world stage will not take place, eventually affecting national security.

The thinking behind these cuts is that industry will pick up the slack. This will have broad implications for our colleges and universities that teach and train new generations of scientists and educators. Plainly, their potential will be impaired and creativity and exploration will be limited.

Education and Nonprofit groups:

The Education Department is targeted for a 14% reduction, which will downsize or eliminate grants for teacher training, afterschool programs, and aid to low-income and minority college students, currently amounting to $3.7 billion in funding.

Cuts to nonprofit groups and public agencies are epitomized by the 21% or 2.5 billion cut to the Department of Labor, which will eliminate grants that help nonprofit groups and public agencies that fund safety and health training.

Cultural Exchange Programs:

The Department of State is slated for $10.9 billion cut or 29% of its budget. That will reduce most cultural exchange programs. Many bilateral educational programs and agreements under the United States Agency for International Development (USAID) will either be severely cut or completely eliminated.

Hopefully these changes will not pass Congress since some agencies, such as NIH and NSF, have strong bipartisan support. However, according to Barry Toiv, a spokesman for the Association of American Universities, which represents major research institutions, “If Congress goes along with deep overall cuts in non-defense discretionary funding, significant cuts to research spending are almost inevitable.”

Solutions are difficult to anticipate. What is certain, however, is that competition will increase and those submitting proposals will have to be equipped with all the tools that will make their proposals competitive, such as training, mentors, partnerships, collaboration and interdisciplinarity.

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Federal Sources

Citations from federal studies have an inherent authenticity that appeals to many donors. Regardless of discipline, most researchers and writers can make use of the following sites:

• USA.gov is the most authoritative statistical portal. You can search for and find statistics spanning all topics.
• Data.gov contains data and statistics on several topics pulled from federal agencies, state and local governments, and several major institutions of higher education.
• The Bureau of Labor and Statistics is the principal fact-finding agency for the Federal Government in the broad field of work economics and statistics.
• The National Center for Science and Engineering Statistics is the nation’s leading data source for science and engineering studies.
• The Department of Education has a large collection of statistical information pertaining to education.
• PubMed is a research warehouse for nearly all medical studies conducted within the U.S.
• All of the 26 federal funding agencies, such as the Department of Justice and the Department of Agriculture, hold a wealth of data within their individual websites.
• The National Archives and Records Administration provides access to archives and historical records. Historians and librarians will greatly benefit from this site.

Multilateral Organizations

Multilateral organizations are a great source of information on national and international areas such as in health, economics, geosciences and education. The following sites are just a few of the major resources:

• The International Monetary Fund (IMF) houses a comprehensive collection of research and statistics with publications in multiple digital formats. The IMF eLibrary is an excellent resource for global statistics and information.
• The World Bank provides data on multiple global-scale topics, such as poverty, education, and technology.
• The World Health Organization is an excellent resource on world health data and statistics.
• The Asian Development Bank and African Development Bank have country-specific economic and business performance measurements, data, and statistics.
• The United Nations Education, Scientific, and Cultural Organization (UNESCO) has an array of data on culture and education gathered from global studies.
• The Organization for Economic Co-Operation Development (OECD) iLibrary, although not a multi-lateral organization, can be a great resource for international data for many disciplines.

Medical and Scientific Research

The most authoritative place to begin looking for data and resources for medical research is the National Institute of Health (NIH) site. For scientific research, it is the National Science Foundation (NSF). In addition, the following resources provide further statistics for some disciplines:

• Nature.com’s Statistics for Biologists focuses on data and resources in biology.
• The American Physical Society houses resources and guides for physics research.
• The American Cancer Society focuses on data for cancer research.

Social Sciences Research

Social scientists should make use of mixed method research. Both qualitative and quantitative data can be found at the following sites:

• The American Fact Finder pulls statistics from the U.S. Census Bureau data.
• The American Psychological Association provides resources and data for psychological research.
• The American Sociological Association supplies information and links for sociological research.

To have any chance of being funded you must always start with an important idea. Once you have that, citing authoritative previous research and data to demonstrate the completeness, legitimacy, and accuracy of your idea will greatly increase that chance. The resources listed above are only the some of the countless available, but they should provide an excellent start while writing your proposal.

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CoSTEM

The multi-agency Committee on STEM Education (CoSTEM) has generated four new grants for 2015 that shift the focus to the teachers. These four funding opportunities will facilitate and encourage teachers and education administrators to develop additional high-quality STEM programs and lessons by sponsoring the following:

• STEM Innovation Proposal – This $170 million grant program will be divided among those who can demonstrate fresh ideas and new techniques to teach the next generation of innovators.
• STEM Innovation Networks – School district and college partnerships are the target of this $110 million program. The goal is to increase the number of students in STEM field career tracks.
• STEM Teacher Pathways – Recruitment and training of STEM teachers is the primary directive of this $40 million program.
• National STEM Master Teacher Corps – $20 million has been dedicated to recognition and assistance for outstanding STEM teachers who are having a real impact in their communities.

NSF

The National Science Foundation (NSF) offers ten STEM-focused grant programs, each with numerous possible directions for proposals. Primarily, the NSF focuses on undergraduate and higher levels of education; however, the agency does partner with organizations and other agencies to augment secondary STEM education. Also, the Broader Impacts section of each NSF proposal must include an outreach component in order to strengthen STEM education. Typical NSF STEM grant programs are:

• Science, Technology, Engineering, and Mathematics Talent Expansion Program (STEP) – The goal of STEP is to increase the number of students earning undergraduate degrees in STEM disciplines, with awards between $50,000 and $1.5 million.
• Improving Undergraduate STEM Education (IUSE: EHR) – This program seeks to make STEM undergraduate education a better-supported set of disciplines, whether by improving student learning experiences or institutional program reform. Awards range from $94,000 to $2 million.

Department of Education

More than thirty-four programs at the U.S. Department of Education focus on or give priority to STEM education. With the recent movement toward STEM-oriented disciplines, even more programs will be developed. The Department of Education supports all levels of education, and many K-12 school systems depend on this funding. Two examples of STEM grant programs are:

• Mathematics and Science Partnerships – The goal of this program is to improve math and science education via partnerships between K-12 school systems or education programs and STEM professionals, and between teachers and institutions of higher education for training purposes.
• Minority Science and Engineering Improvement Program – This initiative solicits long-term projects to increase the number of people from underrepresented groups, especially women.

Private Foundations

An increasing number of private foundations are taking the initiative to solve the STEM education problem in America. Support for teacher training, innovation in the classroom, or undergraduate research is available from many organizations, from local community nonprofits to globally recognized foundations. Some examples are:

• Gates Foundation – A technology component and teacher support are required for the CollegeReady program, which seeks to improve personalized learning in the classroom.
• Alfred P. Sloan Foundation – The Leadership Diversity program seeks to sponsor faculty positions and professional development for underrepresented groups.
• Society of Hispanic Professional Engineers Foundation – The Noche de Ciencias program sponsors a series of informative and interactive student activities throughout the community to generate an interest of the STEM disciplines in Hispanic students.
• Burroughs Wellcome Fund – Promoting Innovation in Science and Mathematics (PrISM) awards are granted to exceptional K-12 teachers for classroom support in STEM education.

The call to action from these organizations has broadened the horizons for those who have been seeking to make a difference in their classrooms or institutions. Innovative, creative, and outcome- and student-centered approaches are what will drive the changes toward correcting America’s STEM education problem.

The post Fixing America`s STEM Problem: Funding Opportunities appeared first on Grant Training Center Blog.

The Learning Environment and Challenging Curriculum

Funding requests should include the following best practices for a positive learning environment:

• Encouraged collaboration between students
• Topics that relate to student interests and the discovery process
• Integration of math, science, and technology to help students understand the importance and connections between these fields
• Focus on hands-on experience, not just textbook learning
• Students should be helped to understand that failure is a normal occurrence while learning, and under no circumstances should they be punished for failure
• Flexible curriculum that demonstrates and facilitates creativity
• Use of latest technology, visual aids, and laboratory kits to foster learning
• An inquiry-based experiential curriculum that is clearly defined and understood
• Real-world applications
• Critical thinking and problem solving
• Student-centered plans to carry out investigations
• Students critiquing their own and their peers’ science practices
• Criteria that incorporate local, state, and national standards

Teacher Training on Inquiry-Based Learning

I would agree with Bill Gates, who said: “Technology is just a tool. In terms of getting the kids working together and motivating them, the teacher is the most important.” Teacher training should be ongoing and provide the techniques to use state-of-the-art technology and experiential teaching approaches. The focus should be on how teachers and students can work together as active learners. Specifically, training should include:

• Outcome-based lessons, whereby teachers transform their classes to include components of their training
• Topics for classroom instruction, such as: inquiry-based science teaching, the frontiers of science, and the analysis of difficult problems
• Subjects that lead to inquiry-based science learning with embedded student experiments
• An emphasis on the importance of student diversity, individuality, and uniqueness

Defined Outcomes or Assessment

Your proposal should clearly identify goals and objectives, and success should be measured against them. These should reflect the short-, mid-, and long-term outcomes. The evaluation should include a mixed method approach, in which quantitative and qualitative information is sought. The resulting assessment must clearly demonstrate a continuous effort to improve the program and ensure that all students are reached.

Sustained Commitment from the School Leadership, Parents and Community

In order for any STEM program to be sustained, collective support should be a major factor. This should begin with the school leadership, who should encourage and reward teachers who practice inquiry learning. Just as importantly, parents should be recognized for being involved in their children’s education. The community can also become an active partner via the funding from private industry.

These elements need to be included in a funding request to the donor to win STEM education grants. Both the public and private sectors are now offering funding opportunities, based on the urgency of this problem.

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