42 U.S.C. § 18992 — Undergraduate STEM education

(a) Research on STEM education and workforce needs. The Director must make competitive awards to four-year colleges or nonprofits (or consortia of them) to support research and development to: (1) encourage collaboration and coordination between colleges and industry, enhancing education, hands-on learning, and alignment with workforce needs; (2) understand the current STEM workforce's makeup and the factors influencing its growth, retention, and development; (3) increase the STEM workforce's size, diversity, capability, and flexibility; and (4) increase dissemination and widespread adoption of effective practices in undergraduate education and workforce development. (b) Omitted. (c) Innovations in STEM education at community colleges. (1) The Director must make merit-reviewed, competitive awards to colleges or nonprofits (or consortia) to advance research on teaching and learning at community colleges, and to improve outcomes for students entering the workforce or transferring to four-year schools, including by: (A) examining how to scale up successful community college programs improving foundational STEM course outcomes; (B) supporting research on effective STEM teaching practices at community colleges; (C) designing and developing new STEM curricula; (D) providing students with hands-on training, research experiences, internships, and other experiential learning; (E) increasing access to high-quality STEM education through new technologies; (F) re-skilling or up-skilling current workers for new STEM jobs; (G) building STEM career and seamless transfer pathways; and (H) developing new ways to identify and recruit talent into STEM programs, particularly from groups historically underrepresented in STEM. (2) The Director must encourage applications developing, enhancing, or expanding cooperative STEM education and training partnerships between colleges, industry, and labor organizations. (d) Improving access to STEM education at career and technical education institutions. (1) The Director must make competitive awards to colleges, including postsecondary vocational institutions, to support career and technical education in STEM and computer science fields. (2) The Director must give priority to institutions demonstrating effective strategies to recruit and provide career and technical education to veterans and transitioning service members. (3) "Career and technical education" has the meaning given in section 2302 of title 20. (e) Course-based undergraduate research experiences. (1) The Director must run a 4-year pilot program, making competitive awards to colleges and nonprofits (or consortia) to establish at least five Centers that develop and scale up successful models for hands-on, course-based undergraduate research experiences. (2) These awards must be used to: (A) develop, assess, and disseminate models for course-based research experiences across STEM disciplines and education levels; (B) identify and address opportunities and challenges implementing these across a broad range of institution types, including historically Black colleges, Tribal Colleges or Universities, minority-serving institutions, and community colleges; (C) identify and develop best practices addressing faculty barriers, including institutional culture, resources, and incentives; (D) identify and address factors that facilitate or discourage participation by students from all backgrounds; (E) give faculty curriculum, professional development, training, networking, and other support to develop, adapt, or expand a course-based research experience; and (F) collect data and carry out research to evaluate these experiences' impact on the STEM workforce. (3) In making awards, the Director must consider how much a proposed Center will build partnerships among multiple academic institution types, including community colleges, emerging research institutions, EPSCoR institutions, historically Black colleges, Tribal Colleges or Universities, and minority-serving institutions, plus the private sector and other stakeholders, to support faculty training and the widespread, sustained use of promising, evidence-based practices. (4) Within 180 days after the pilot program completes, the Director must submit a report to Congress that includes: (A) an assessment, including feedback from the research community, of how effective the pilot was at increasing the number, diversity, and workforce readiness of STEM graduates; and (B) if determined effective, a plan for permanent implementation.