Alliances for Graduate Education and the Professoriate | Apply Online

Opportunity Summary:

The National Science Foundation (NSF) opportunity titled Alliances for Graduate Education and the Professoriate (AGEP) is designed to increase the number of underrepresented minorities (URMs), including individuals with disabilities, who enter, persist in, and complete STEM graduate education and postdoctoral training, ultimately strengthening pathways into academic STEM careers. The program frames this as a national workforce and faculty diversity priority, emphasizing that a more diverse professoriate helps shape scientific culture and expectations through mentorship, role modeling, and institutional leadership. For AGEP purposes, URMs are defined as African Americans, Hispanic Americans, American Indians, Alaska Natives, Native Hawaiians, and other Pacific Islanders, and the program focus is specifically on URM U.S. citizens in STEM graduate education and/or postdoctoral training and their preparation for faculty and academic career trajectories across all institution types.

A central feature of AGEP is its emphasis on building, testing, and spreading evidence-based approaches that improve URM participation and success in graduate and postdoctoral environments. Rather than funding individual students directly, AGEP supports institutions, alliances, and researchers to create stronger systems: improved mentoring structures, better climate and belonging strategies, stronger professional development and academic career preparation, and reforms that remove barriers while expanding proven supportive practices. Projects may address any STEM discipline funded by NSF, explicitly including the social, behavioral, and economic sciences, as well as multi-, cross-, or interdisciplinary STEM areas. While the core is academic STEM career preparation, broader STEM professional development can be included when it is well-justified and clearly connected to the program goals.

The solicitation supports three main project types. AGEP Transformation awards fund strategic alliances among institutions and organizations to develop, implement, and study innovative models and standards for graduate education, postdoctoral training, and faculty preparation. These alliances are expected to tackle structural or cultural factors that hinder URM success and to build practices that measurably improve recruitment, retention, completion, and transition into academic roles. AGEP Knowledge Adoption and Translation (KAT) awards focus on scaling what already works by expanding the adoption or adaptation of research findings and evidence-based practices that strengthen URM outcomes in graduate school, postdoctoral training, and academic career preparation. AGEP Broadening Participation Research (BPR) awards support investigator-initiated empirical research that develops and tests theory-driven innovations and models, contributing new knowledge about what improves URM participation and success and why those strategies work in different contexts.

AGEP also strongly encourages participation and leadership from a wide range of institution types, especially those historically focused on educating diverse populations and expanding access. Community colleges, primarily undergraduate institutions, Minority Serving Institutions (including HBCUs, HSIs, Tribal Colleges and Universities, and Alaska Native and Native Hawaiian Serving Institutions), womens colleges, and institutions that primarily serve persons with disabilities are encouraged to participate as lead institutions and/or alliance partners across the project types. For Transformation projects in particular, the alliance structure is central, and at least one partner must offer a Ph.D. in an NSF-supported field that is included in the alliance activities. Alliance partners can include nonprofit higher education institutions, industry, nonprofit organizations, and federal national laboratories, with the understanding that NSF funds can only flow to entities eligible under NSF rules.

The solicitation makes clear that AGEP does not provide direct fellowships or personal awards to individual graduate students or postdocs for their education or research. Students looking for individual graduate support are pointed toward the NSF Graduate Research Fellowship Program (GRFP), and postdocs are directed to NSF postdoctoral opportunities. In addition, the announcement highlights a related mechanism called AGEP Graduate Research Supplements (AGEP GRS) housed in the Directorate for Mathematical and Physical Sciences (MPS). Through this supplement pathway, principal investigators with existing MPS awards at current or former AGEP-participating (legacy) institutions or units may request support to add one additional Ph.D. student to an existing research award, covering typical graduate support costs such as stipend, tuition, benefits, and indirect costs. The stated aim is to increase doctoral-level research engagement and improve diversity and retention in the mathematical and physical sciences while strengthening learning environments.

From an administrative standpoint, this was a discretionary NSF funding opportunity using cooperative agreements, categorized under science and technology and other research and development. The funding opportunity number is 14-505, with an estimated total funding level of $4.8 million and an expectation of about 11 awards. Typical award sizes ranged from $200,000 (floor) to $1,750,000 (ceiling), and there was no cost-sharing or matching requirement. The deadlines were split by project type: AGEP Transformation proposals were due February 5, 2014, while AGEP KAT and AGEP BPR proposals were due February 12, 2014. Eligibility differed by track: Transformation proposals required strategic alliances and specific partner characteristics, while KAT and BPR proposals were open to eligible individuals and organizations consistent with the NSF Grant Proposal Guide.

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