This grant provides three years of continued support for the Sloan Scholars Mentoring Network (SSMN), a robust network for alumni of the Foundation’s Minority Ph.D. and UCEM programs (“Sloan Scholars”).  The SSMN serves many important aims. First and foremost, it provides an opportunity for the Sloan Foundation to continue to invest in Sloan Scholars after they have completed graduate study and are transitioning into professional life, thus increasing the likelihood that scholars will stay in STEM careers. Second, the network fosters community amongst scholars, understanding that community connections are especially important to those underrepresented in STEM. Third, the SSMN nurtures mentoring connections between alumni and current scholars—a connection both groups have been eager to engage in. Grants funds will support a strategic mix of workshops, grants, and networking opportunities during the grant period, including an Academic Job Market, a New Faculty Bootcamp, and an awards program that provides more research seed funding, mentoring grants, and travel awards to scholars. Additional activities supported under this grant include an expansion of target populations to include alumni beyond those in academe; strengthened efforts to connect current scholars and alumni; greater coordination and an initiative to expand network activities to include alumni of the Sloan Indigenous Graduate Partnership. All enhancements and adjustments to network activities are informed by feedback received from alumni, current scholars, and the SSMN advisory committee.

This grant supports efforts by the Council of Graduate Schools to provide services to the higher education community in the wake of the United States Supreme Court’s decisions in Students For Fair Admissions v. Harvard and Students For Fair Admissions v. University of North Carolina, two cases challenging the constitutionality of the use of race as one factor in college and university admissions decisions.  Grant funding will allow CGS to understand the ways in which the SCOTUS decisions are impacting graduate admissions and broader graduate education DEI efforts; to educate the graduate community about strategies for pursuing equity in the post-decision environment; and to build consensus about legally sound admissions practices for graduate education across key communities.

This grant funds an awards program by Film Independent (FIND), producer of the Independent Spirit Awards, that aims to help produce and distribute feature films with scientific or technological themes, or those that feature scientists, engineers, technologists, inventors, or mathematicians as major characters. FIND makes several grants each year to achieve these aims: one producer a year is selected to develop a science-themed script in FIND’s Producing Lab with a $30,000 Producer’s grant and a reception and promotion around this project (the Lab accepts ten producers per year); one producer or producing team is selected per year for the Sloan Fast Track Fellowship with a $20,000 cash grant and invitation to the Fast Track film financing market (up to ten projects per year are selected); one outstanding episodic television writer is selected each year for a $20,000 grant to develop a science-themed series in FIND’s Episodic Lab; and one exceptional science-themed film is awarded a distribution grant of $50,000 to incentivize buyers to acquire an eligible film for distribution. In addition, FIND will host both an annual Sloan Salon with a science theme and 100 attendees and an annual Fellows Party with about 500 attendees to celebrate the growing film pipeline and link the Foundation to the wider filmmaking community.

This grant supports an initiative by Pioneer Works (PW), a thriving, multi-disciplinary cultural center in Red Hook, Brooklyn, to launch Broadcast 2.0, an online magazine across media and disciplines with science as a foundational pillar. PW’s initial effort, The Broadcast, reached more than 400,000 readers and more than 2.5 million views on their YouTube channel. This grant will allow PW to improve and relaunch The Broadcast. Planned new content features will include a Scientific Controversies series, in which Janna Levin interviews two leading scientists about their latest work; Author Talks (about new science books); Science and Society (environment); and a new literature vertical. PW will also launch an annual Broadcast print issue, host live programs tied to digital content, and develop strategic partnerships with other major media and social media organizations. Other funded activities include an ambitious marketing and social media campaign, a major build-out of their Science newsletter, the implementation of advanced user behavioral tracking, and development of a donation, subscription, and membership model to move the project toward independent financial sustainability.

The pandemic has only underscored how caregiving systems lack resilience, affordability, or even just staff, and how that lack holds people back from achieving their dreams. The result is renewed policymaker interest in the U.S. care economy, as evidenced by President Biden’s April 2023 executive order to improve access to care and support care workers and New Mexico’s landmark decision to offer free childcare to most families in 2022. Designing and implementing cost-effective, evidence-based policies crucially depends upon rigorous empirical analysis coupled with theoretical models of care. Yet care relationships are well-represented by neither canonical economic models nor traditional economic indicators like GDP. A new research program on the “Social Science of Caregiving” at Stanford’s Center for Advanced Study in the Behavioral Sciences (CASBS) aims to help rethink the philosophical, biological, political, and economic foundations of care, and consider how to translate those insights for policymaking. The project’s two-pronged approach involves developing a research program on the cognitive economics of care, and coordinating and disseminating the findings of a broad, interdisciplinary research effort. Alison Gopnik, Professor of Psychology at UC Berkeley, and Margaret Levi, Professor of Political Science at Stanford, are leading the project. So far, they have organized multiple workshops convening economists, psychologists, political scientists, neuroscientists, computer scientists, and policy experts, among others, to outline a preliminary research agenda and produce a general scientific understanding of care. Topics include studying how humans conceptualize care; the ways in which new AI technologies affect our understanding of care; and the economic consequences of cultural assumptions about gender roles in care. Sloan funding will support research led by Gopnik on the cognitive economics of care; virtual and in-person research meetings; the recruitment and convening of an interdisciplinary Advisory Board to ensure that the program’s basis research meets the needs of economists and applied social scientists; and the dissemination of the project’s research outputs to broad audiences through a variety of academic and non-academic channels.