EHR Advisory Committee Holds Fall Meeting


October 2019

On October 29, the National Science Foundation (NSF) Education and Human Resources (EHR) Advisory Committee held its fall meeting to discuss the EHR directorate’s activities and priorities.

EHR assistant director Karen Marrongelle opened the meeting with an update on activities, including the EHR partnership with Boeing and the awarding of three new INCLUDES alliances. (The NSF INCLUDES program seeks to enhance collaboration and strengthen existing relationships among those working to broaden participation in STEM, and to bring in new partners and provide resources and support to enhance their work.) Marrongelle noted her participation in a House roundtable meeting in July on rural STEM education and her September testimony for the House Commerce, Justice, and Science appropriations subcommittee.

NSF staff updated the committee on the activities of interagency working groups as part of the federal five-year strategic plan in STEM education. These areas included convergence, transparency and accountability, inclusion, computation literacy, and strategic partnership.

The EHR Advisory Committee also considered the 2014 report Strategic Re-envisioning for the Education and Human Resources Directorate, to revisit the recommendations and to consider possible updates. Committee members highlighted how the intentional language treating broader participation as a solution and not a problem has shaped other programs such as INCLUDES. The committee also discussed the future of STEM education, including the potential long-term impact of evolving STEM learning environments and technologies.  

F. Fleming Crim, NSF chief operating officer, provided the committee with updates on the NSF budget and 10 Big Ideas, activities to celebrate the 70th anniversary of NSF, and a preliminary transition plan once NSF director France Cordóva’s term ends in 2020.

Kaye Husbands Fealing, professor and chair at Georgia Tech and a member of the NSF’s Committee on Equal Opportunities in Science and Engineering, presented the recommendation to NSF that the committee had advanced in its 2017–18 biennial report to Congress: to “give increased attention to including community voices across its research and education portfolios through community-driven projects.”

The committee also discussed encouraging proposals for the midscale research infrastructure competition from education researchers, for how EHR should develop capacity for building public-private partnerships, and for developing common metrics to measure broadening participation.