Want NSF funding? You’ll need to submit a grad student mentoring plan

Here are the details of the U.S. agency’s new policy, which extends the existing requirement for postdocs.

Starting this week, principal investigators (PIs) seeking funding from the U.S. National Science Foundation (NSF) will be required to include a plan describing how they will mentor the graduate students and postdoctoral researchers involved in the project as part of their application.

PIs who receive funding will also be required to certify annually that graduate students and postdocs who receive “substantial support” from a grant have active individual development plans (IDPs), documents that lay out an individual’s career and professional development plans and are often developed as a collaboration between mentors and mentees.

“Future STEM talent is a valuable national resource, and we cannot squander the opportunity to prepare that talent to persist in STEM,” Sylvia Butterfield—deputy assistant director for NSF’s Directorate for STEM Education—said during a webinar held last month by the Council of Graduate Schools (CGS) describing the changes.