NSF INCLUDES is a comprehensive, national initiative to enhance U.S. leadership in science, technology, engineering, and mathematics (STEM) discovery and innovation, focused on NSF's commitment to ensuring accessibility and inclusivity in STEM fields, as communicated in the NSF Strategic Plan for Fiscal Years (FY) 2022 - 2026. The vision of NSF INCLUDES is to catalyze the STEM enterprise to work collaboratively for inclusive change, resulting in a STEM workforce that reflects the diversity of the Nation's population. More specifically, NSF INCLUDES seeks to motivate and accelerate collaborative infrastructure building to advance equity and sustain systemic change to broaden participation in STEM fields at scale. Significant advancement in the inclusion of groups that have historically been excluded from or under-served in STEM will result in a new generation of STEM talent and leadership to secure the Nation's future and long-term economic competitiveness.
The NSF INCLUDES National Network is a multifaceted collaboration of agencies, organizations, and individuals working collectively to broaden participation in STEM. The NSF INCLUDES National Network serves as a testbed for designing, implementing, studying, refining, and scaling collaborative change models.
With the solicitation, NSF offers support for five types of projects that connect and contribute to the National Network:
(1) Design and Development Launch Pilots
(2) Collaborative Change Consortia
(3) Alliances
(4) Network Connectors
(5) Conferences.
3 and 4 above may be submitted in 2025.
All NSF INCLUDES funded projects must operationalize five design elements of collaborative infrastructure - (1) shared vision, (2) partnerships, (3) goals and metrics, (4) leadership and communication, and (5) expansion, sustainability, and scale - to create systemic change that will lead to the substantially broadened participation of individuals from historically excluded and under-served groups in STEM.
Letters of Intent are no longer required for proposal submissions. However, Investigators planning to submit a proposal are strongly encouraged to submit a one-page description of their proposal idea to nsfincludes@nsf.gov at least two months prior to proposal submission so that an NSF INCLUDES program director can provide feedback on alignment of the idea with NSF INCLUDES' goals.
Anticipated Funding Amount: $5,500,000 for all project types in each competition year. Anticipated funding amount, number of awards, and average award size and duration are contingent upon the availability of funds.
Limit on Number of Proposals per Organization: An organization may serve as a lead organization on only one proposal per project type, not including conferences. Proposals that exceed the organizational limit will be returned without review. No exceptions will be made.
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