Last fall, the University of California, Davis (UC Davis) announced it had received more than $1 million in National Science Foundation grants to focus on computing and related science, technology, engineering, and math (STEM) disciplines. These fields are identified as priorities by the U.S. Office of Science and Technology Policy. The two National Science Foundation (NSF) grants were received by the Graduate School of Management at UC Davis.
According to the university, which has the third-largest enrollment in the system after UCLA and UC Berkeley, UC Davis will administer funding on behalf of the NSF through the two-day Hispanic-Serving Institutions (HSI) Strategic Innovation Summit and the four-year Visiting Innovative Scholar Research Program for Institutions Orienting to National Needs or VISION.
The virtual HSI Strategic Innovation Summit hosted by UC Davis will bring together professors and researchers from HSIs, senior university officials, industry experts, and government sponsors to explore ways to accelerate research and create undergraduate courses in artificial intelligence (AI) and quantum information sciences at HSIs.
VISION will recruit, train, mentor, support, and place early and mid-career doctoral degree holders in STEM fields to conduct research at minority-serving institutions. The program will work with partners at UC Davis in the Mike and Renee Child Institute for Innovation and Entrepreneurship, the Center for Educational Effectiveness, the Office of Research, the College of Engineering, and the Office of Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion.
In 2019, data from UC Davis showed that 26 percent of undergraduates identify as Chicano or Latina. The Hispanic Association of Colleges and Universities (HACU) notes that HSIs educate more than two-thirds of the nation’s undergraduate Hispanic students. Minority Serving Institutions, which include HSIs and Tribal Colleges and Universities, train an increasing percentage of the students the country needs to meet future U.S. workforce goals.
The NSF awards are expected to help UC Davis work to increase the number of underrepresented science and engineering students who will contribute to the future STEM workforce nationwide, develop faculty, and building research capacity to prepare and support students within STEM. Click here to read more.
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