42 U.S.C. § 18993 — Graduate STEM education

(a) Mentoring and professional development. (1) Mentoring plans. (A) Omitted. (B) Within 120 days of August 9, 2022, the Director must enter an agreement with a qualified independent organization to evaluate how effective the postdoctoral mentoring plan requirement is at improving mentoring for Foundation-supported postdoctoral researchers. (2) Career exploration. (A) The Director must make competitive awards to colleges and nonprofits (or consortia) to develop innovative approaches for helping graduate students and postdoctoral scholars explore academic and nonacademic career options, including work-integrated opportunities, and to research the impact of these activities. (B) In selecting award recipients, the Director must consider at least: (i) how committed the institution's administrators are to making the activity a priority; and (ii) how likely the institution is to sustain or expand the activity after the award ends. (3) Development plans. The Director must require that annual project reports for awards supporting graduate students and postdoctoral scholars include the principal investigator's certification that each graduate student or postdoctoral scholar receiving substantial support has developed and annually updated an individual development plan covering educational goals, career exploration, and professional development. (4) Professional development supplement. The Director must carry out a five-year pilot awarding up to 2,500 competitive administrative supplements of up to $2,000 each, annually, added to existing research awards, to support professional development for graduate students and postdoctoral researchers who receive a substantial portion of their support under that award. No more than 10 percent of these supplements may support postdoctoral researchers' professional development. (5) Graduate education research. The Director must make competitive awards to colleges or nonprofits (or consortia) to support research on the graduate education system and the outcomes of various interventions and policies, including: (A) how traineeships, fellowships, internships, and teaching and research assistantships affect graduate student outcomes; (B) how graduate education and mentoring policies and procedures affect degree completion, including differences by (i) sex, race and ethnicity, and citizenship, and (ii) student debt load; (C) developing and assessing new or adapted interventions, including approaches improving mentoring relationships, conflict management skills, and healthy research teams; and (D) research, data collection, and assessment of graduate student mental health and wellbeing, its contributing factors and consequences, and evidence-based strategies and policies to support it. (b) Graduate Research Fellowship Program update. (1) Congress's sense is that the Foundation should increase the number of new graduate research fellows supported annually, over the next 5 years, to no fewer than 3,000. (2) Omitted. (3) The Director must ensure students pursuing master's and doctoral degrees in cybersecurity-related fields are eligible to apply for scholarships and fellowships under the Graduate Research Fellowship Program under section 1869 of this title. (c) Study on graduate student funding. (1) Within 120 days of August 9, 2022, the Director must enter an agreement with a qualified independent organization to evaluate: (A) the Foundation's role supporting graduate student education and training through fellowships, traineeships, and other funding models; and (B) how different funding mechanisms affect graduate student experiences and outcomes, including whether effects differ across subsets of the student population. (2) Within 1 year of August 9, 2022, the Director must publish the evaluation's results, including a recommendation for the right balance between fellowships, traineeships, and other funding models. (d) AI scholarship-for-service. (1) "Executive agency" has the meaning given "Executive agency" in section 105 of title 5. (2) Within 1 year, the Director, coordinating with the Office of Personnel Management, must submit to four named congressional committees a report on the need and feasibility, and if appropriate plans, for a program to recruit and train the next generation of AI professionals for federal, state, local, and tribal governments. The report must include: (A) recent statistical data on the federal AI workforce's size, composition, and educational requirements, including current and future demand; (B) an assessment of colleges' capacity to produce graduates with AI degrees, certifications, and skills meeting federal workforce needs; and (C) an evaluation of the need for and feasibility of a scholarship-for-service program, including opportunities to leverage the existing Federal Cyber Scholarship-for-Service Program in standing one up. (3) After submitting that report, the Director, coordinating with the Office of Personnel Management, the NIST Director, and other agency heads with relevant scientific knowledge, is authorized to establish a Federal AI Scholarship-for-Service Program to recruit and train AI professionals for federal, state, local, and tribal government missions. (4) The Director, coordinating with other relevant agencies, must establish criteria to designate "qualified institutions of higher education" eligible to participate, including: (A) measures of the institution's demonstrated excellence educating students in AI; and (B) measures of its ability to attract and retain a diverse and nontraditional student population in STEM fields, which may include women, minorities, and individuals with disabilities. (5) The program must: (A) provide scholarships through qualified institutions to students in AI-related degree programs; (B) provide recipients with summer internships or other meaningful temporary Federal appointments focused on AI projects or research; (C) prioritize placing recipients in executive agencies; (D) identify opportunities for multi-disciplinary programs integrating AI training with other fields, including the social, economic, legal, and ethical implications of AI; (E) support capacity-building education research enabling institutions to expand training the next-generation AI workforce; (F) create technology ethics courses or training programs for scholarship recipients; and (G) award fellowships to master's and doctoral students pursuing degrees or research in AI and related fields, including technology ethics. (6) Each scholarship must cover tuition and fees for up to 3 years, plus an additional stipend. (7) As a condition of receiving a scholarship, each recipient must agree to work, for a period equal to the scholarship's length after receiving their degree, in the AI mission of: (A) an executive agency; (B) Congress, including any legislative branch agency, entity, office, or commission; (C) an interstate agency; (D) a state, local, or tribal government, which may include teaching AI-related skills in a public school system; or (E) a state, local, or tribal government-affiliated nonprofit considered critical infrastructure. (8) Hiring authority: (A) notwithstanding normal competitive-service appointment rules, an executive agency may appoint a program graduate to an excepted-service position; (B) except as provided in (D), upon completing the service term, the agency may convert the employee noncompetitively to a term, career-conditional, or career appointment; (C) an agency may make that conversion before the term appointment expires; and (D) an agency may decline the conversion or appointment for cause. (9) To be eligible for a scholarship, an individual must: (A) be a U.S. citizen or lawful permanent resident; (B) demonstrate commitment to a career advancing AI; (C) be a full-time student, a student on at least a half-time basis, or an AI faculty member on sabbatical, at a qualified institution; and (D) accept the scholarship's terms. (10) (A) As a condition of support, a recipient must agree to provide the institution with annual verifiable documentation of post-award employment and up-to-date contact information. (B) A recipient becomes liable for repayment if the individual: (i) fails to maintain acceptable academic standing; (ii) is dismissed for disciplinary reasons; (iii) withdraws before completing the degree program; (iv) declares an intent not to fulfill the post-award employment obligation; or (v) fails to fulfill it. (11) A qualified institution must: (A) agree with the Director to monitor recipients' compliance with post-award employment obligations; and (B) provide the Director annual post-award employment documentation for recipients until they complete their obligation. (12) Amount of repayment: (A) if a triggering circumstance occurs before completing 1 year of service, the full scholarship amount received must be repaid, or treated as a loan under paragraph (13); (B) if a circumstance under paragraph (10)(B)(iv) or (v) occurs after completing 1 or more years of service, the amount owed is the full scholarship amount reduced by the ratio of years served to years required, repaid directly or as a loan. (13) Any such loan is treated as a Federal Direct Unsubsidized Stafford Loan, subject to repayment with interest accruing from the scholarship award date, on terms the Director sets in consultation with the Secretary of Education. (14) (A) If repayment is required, the qualified institution must determine the amount, notify the recipient and Director, and collect it within a Director-set period, or it is treated as a loan under paragraph (13). (B) Except as provided in (C), repayments go to the U.S. Treasury. (C) An institution may retain a fixed percentage the Director sets, applying to all eligible entities, to defray collection's administrative costs. (15) The Director may partially or fully waive or suspend a service or repayment obligation when compliance is impossible, would cause extreme hardship, or would be unconscionable to enforce. (16) (A) The Director, coordinating with the Office of Personnel Management, must annually evaluate and make public, while protecting recipients' personally identifiable information, data on the program's success recruiting and hiring and retaining individuals in the public-sector AI workforce, including placement rates, where and in what job titles students are placed, salary ranges for those not released from obligations, how long after graduation placement occurs, how long students stay in their positions, how many are released from obligations, and what remedial training is required. (B) At least once every 3 years, the Director, coordinating with the Office of Personnel Management, must submit a report with these evaluation results and recent federal AI workforce statistics to four named congressional committees. (C) The Director, coordinating with the Office of Personnel Management, must provide consolidated, user-friendly online resources for prospective applicants, including, to the extent practicable, searchable and accurate information about participating institutions and AI-related job opportunities, and a modernized description of AI careers. (17) At least once every 2 years, the Director, coordinating with the Office of Personnel Management, must review and update the Federal AI Scholarship-for-Service Program to reflect technology advances.