Undergraduate and Graduate Students

Searchable Portals for Federally-sponsored Opportunities for STEM Undergraduate and Graduate Students

  • Led by the U.S. Department of Energy’s (DOE) Office of Science (SC), the participating agencies in the National Science and Technology Council’s (NSTC) Committee on Science, Technology, Engineering, and Mathematics Education (CoSTEM), in collaboration with Science.gov, have launched a pair of web-based portals for searching Federally-sponsored opportunities in science, technology, engineering, and mathematics (STEM) that target undergraduate students and graduate students.
  • The two portal sites provide a single source of information for both students and universities interested in Federally-sponsored STEM education training and funding opportunities.
  • Student users can search the portal for a range of opportunities that they can apply for directly, such as research internships and fellowships. Likewise, academic institutions can search for Federal funding opportunities to establish innovative training programs for undergraduates or graduate students.
  • Based upon taxonomy and metadata, the faceted portal search results return program names, short descriptions, and direct links to the agency sponsored programs. The faceted searching capability enables targeted searching for opportunity characteristics that include program type, sponsoring agency, location where the opportunity takes place, and STEM discipline. Additionally, users can conduct open text searches on a much larger range of program descriptors using the included search field. In both cases, users can export their search results in one of three file formats.
  • Site users are directed to the Federal sponsor’s program website for the official information about the opportunity and further information such as eligibility and how to apply.
  • The portal sites are hosted on Science.gov, a gateway to government science information and research results, which is governed by 15 Federal agencies under the Science.gov Alliance.
  • Resources to create the sites were provided by DOE’s Office of Science. DOE representatives on the CoSTEM Interagency Working Group (IWG) for Undergraduate STEM Education and the IWG for Graduate STEM Education worked with Federal agency representatives on gathering relevant federally sponsored opportunities and associated program content.
  • Consistent with the Coordination goal outlined in the CoSTEM Five-Year Strategic Plan, the CoSTEM agencies, working through the IWGs, will curate the information available on these sites to keep it current.
  • Federal agencies sponsoring programs not currently available on the sites may add their programs by contacting SC/DOE through the portal sites’ Contact pages (e.g. http://stemgradstudents.science.gov/contact).
  • The portal sites will also serve as a future platform for making new information and resources relevant to the objectives of the CoSTEM IWGs available to their target audiences.