In recent years our small program to improve retention and graduation rates for undergraduate and graduate students in STEM disciplines has focused on encouraging campuses to obtain and use good data on STEM enrollments, migration, retention, graduation rates and time-to-degree. Using small officer grants, we funded three projects: At the American Society for Engineering Education, focused on engineering. They are now ready to pilot test a new data collection template. At the Association of Public and Land Grant Universities, focused on time-to-degree. They are now considering what their next step should be. At Washington University, focused on all of these issues for selective public universities, private universities, and private colleges. The latter project, with leadership now transferred to Swarthmore College, has sparked the desire to create and institutionalize a consortium of campuses that collect uniform institutional data and survey students in order to improve understanding of undergraduate student migration into and out of science, engineering and mathematics disciplines. The group will start by reviewing and revising, as appropriate, the data collection template and survey instrument that emerged from the previous, preliminary project. The participating institutions will then initiate regular collection and reporting of data and surveying of students. At this time, fifteen institutions have agreed to participate, many of which were also involved in the preliminary project. The consortium's executive committee continues to recruit additional institutions to participate. Because it is important to have a critical mass of participants, including within each category of institution, if this request is approved, we will not issue the first check until there are at least 16 committed institutions, at least five in each of the three categories: private colleges, private universities, and public universities.

The first two World Science Festivals (WSF), in which Sloan played the initiatory role and then was one of two key early funders, have been major successes. The 2009 WSF sold out virtually every event and achieved massive media penetration. The WSF embodies the Sloan program in public understanding of science and technology and employs many similar modalities. All the institutions of higher learning in New York, along with the major art museums, science halls, cultural centers and performance spaces, play host to this city-wide science festival and bring their traditional audiences into the tent. Co-founders Alan Alda and Brian Greene appeared as hosts and eloquent spokespeople for the value and impact of science in our culture. This new request, at the same level as the first two years, includes $100,000 to support two new Sloan events for 2010 plus $100,000 earmarked for the development of a three to five year Strategic Plan and Business Development Initiative that will focus on the long?term growth, expansion and stability of the World Science Festival. The Foundation has supported the Science Festival Foundation since 2006 with total grants of $1,345,000.

The Manhattan Theatre Club (MTC), one of the nation's finest and most successful nonprofit theater companies, having received four of the last eight Pulitzer Prizes awarded in Drama, requests a renewal grant of $500,000 over the next three years to build on and expand the Sloan program. The centerpiece of this effort is four annual playwright commissions, three to mid?level or established playwrights and one to an emerging playwright. Sloan's collaboration with MTC is increasingly attracting leading playwrights and the resulting work is playing at theaters across the country. Since Proof in 2000 and Humble Boy in 2003-both MTC plays were supported by Sloan after others had developed them-six new plays commissioned by Sloan have gone on to be staged at major theaters across the country, including Fake currently at the Steppenwolf in Chicago and Intelligence Slave now at the Alley Theater in Houston. The Foundation has supported this work at the Manhattan Theatre Club since 2000 with grants totaling $1,180,000.

As part of our exploration of whether to expand our support for research and public understanding of energy issues, we invited the Council on Foreign Relations to request funding for a workshop on energy security related to oil and gas. The workshop will have three important features: It will go beyond the platitudes and misconceptions that often dominate discussions of this subject. It will result in a well considered research agenda for this field that could guide our grantmaking if we decide to pursue the subject further. It will make a special effort to involve young scholars and policy analysts (meaning those under 40) from a diverse set of academic and professional backgrounds as a modest first step in ensuring that new, fresh blood is brought into the field. We believe that this workshop will be very useful and serve as an excellent foundation to help us decide what, if anything, we wish to do further in this field.