The main goal of the S-STEM program is to enable low-income students with academic ability, talent or potential to pursue successful careers in promising STEM fields. Ultimately, the S-STEM program seeks to increase the number of low-income students who graduate with a STEM-eligible degree and contribute to the American innovation economy with their STEM knowledge. 

Through this solicitation, NSF seeks to foster a network of S-STEM stakeholders and further develop the infrastructure needed to generate and disseminate new knowledge, successful practices and effective design principles arising from NSF S-STEM projects nationwide. The ultimate vision of the legislation governing the S-STEM parent program (and of the current S-STEM-Net solicitation) is that all Americans, regardless of economic status, should be able to contribute to the American innovation economy if they so desire.

To support collaboration within the S-STEM network, NSF will fund several S-STEM Research Hubs (S-STEM-Hub). The S-STEM Network (S-STEM-Net) will collaborate to create synergies and sustain a robust national ecosystem consisting of multi-sector partners supporting domestic low-income STEM students in achieving their career goals, while also ensuring access, inclusion, and adaptability to changing learning needs. The Hubs will investigate evolving barriers to the success of this student population. It will also disseminate the context and circumstances by which interventions and practices that support graduation of domestic low-income students (both undergraduate and graduate) pursuing careers in STEM are successful.

All Research Hubs must propose and budget for activities to:

• identify, develop, and support promising innovative research ideas that generate valuable new knowledge on the US higher education enterprise in general and the S-STEM community in particular;
• gather, analyze, and utilize the data and insights resulting from the experiences of those participating in S-STEM projects to share information about what works and what does not under given circumstances, regarding low-income STEM student achievement;
• share and leverage effective practices on a national scale to improve the achievement and success of domestic low-income students pursuing careers in STEM (including veterans, graduate students, and students in rural areas, if appropriate);
• provide intellectual infrastructure for collaborations with potential to expand the knowledge base about support for domestic low-income, high-achieving STEM students;
• develop mechanisms for dissemination of successful practices, the context in which they work and research results; and,
  ensure that the Research Hub’s activities are inclusive of the broad collection of institutions with S-STEM projects in the research focus of interest including, but not limited to, 2-year colleges, PUIs, minority-serving institutions, and/or research-intensive universities, as appropriate.

Regardless of the focus, all proposals for a Research Hub must describe a plan to include and leverage the diversity of constituents, approaches, disciplines, and ideas that may exist within a thematic topic, and a strategy to explore new knowledge and generate best practices that will be transferable to other locations. While the exact structure of a Research Hub may take many different forms, a successful S-STEM-Hub proposal must:

• present the rationale for the creation of a Research Hub as opposed to a regular research grant. Research questions grounded in the literature that constitute the starting point for the Hub should also be included;
• justify the research work that otherwise could not be advanced without the funded collaboration (why a large award with multiple PIs is needed);
• identify the relevant stakeholders for the proposed Research Hub focus;
• involve multiple S-STEM constituencies and institutions and present a clear plan to recruit researchers and solicit perspectives and expertise from institutions including, but not limited to, 2-year colleges, PUIs, minority-serving institutions, and/or research-intensive universities, as appropriate;
• demonstrate that the proposed S-STEM-Hub’s leadership and advisory structures are reflective of the institution types that most significantly intersect their focus area; 
• describe how the S-STEM-Hub will leverage diverse institutional data streams and/or tackle challenges that cannot be accomplished by a single institution or a team of PIs; and
• describe a project management plan and a mechanism to encourage and enable interaction between S-STEM-Hub stakeholders.
• present an external evaluation plan for the Hub’s activities.

Proposal Deadline: 03/19/2025

Link to FOA Here

Eligibility: Individuals with the skills, knowledge, and resources necessary to carry out the proposed research as a Principal Investigator (PI) are invited to work with their organizations to develop an application. Individuals from underrepresented groups as well as individuals with disabilities are always encouraged to apply.  

Institutional Limit: An organization may submit at most one S-STEM-Hub proposal (as a single institution, a subawardee, or a member of a collaborative research project).

Application Information:  All UD limited submission white papers must use this template found on the Research Office limited submission webpage. Applications not adhering to this requirement will be returned without review.  

Review Criteria: Internal white papers will be reviewed based on the merit review criteria found in the solicitation.