New NSF Funding To Bolster Community College, HBCU Capacity For The Innovation Economy

Last week, the U.S. National Science Foundation launched a new $20 million workforce program called Enabling Partnerships to Increase Innovation Capacity (EPIIC). The NSF EPIC program aims to help more community colleges, historically Black colleges and universities (HBCUs), and minority-serving institutions (MSIs), and other emerging research institutions expand career opportunities in the innovation economy.

The NSF EPIIC program will help colleges build their partnership capacity for training leading to jobs in emerging technology fields including in AI, quantum computing, nanotechnology, and clean energy–all highlighted by Congress as national priorities in the $280 billion CHIPS and Science Act of 2022 passed by the Biden Administration earlier this year.

The program also boost student and faculty entrepreneurship. NSF Director Sethuraman Panchanathan stated that the program will “create opportunities for more inclusive participation in entrepreneurship, startups, and other commercialization activities” in a press releasing announcing the funding program.

NSF expects to award up to 50 institutions with $400,000 grants over a three year period according to the solicitation. Grantees will receive virtual and in-person training focused on workforce development, use-inspired research, and technology transfer—the process of translating student and faculty research at colleges and universities into inventions, startups, and patented intellectual property.

NSF EPIIC follows the launch of a $30 million NSF ExLENT in October which is funding partnerships between workforce entities and emerging technology organizations to create or scale work-based learning and experiential learning programs for youth and adults. Programs eligible for NSF ExLENT funding include apprenticeships, co-ops, internships, and bootcamps that focus on emerging technology fields.

Both programs are housed within NSF’s Technology, Innovation, and Partnerships (TIP) Directorate which was formed at the start of 2022 to help accelerate technological innovation, startup formation, and job creation resulting from federally funded research and development.

NSF hopes that EPIIC will also help more community colleges, HBCUs, and MSIs partner with larger research universities for applications to the larger NSF Engines program announced earlier this year by the directorate. NSF Engines will provide $160 million to several regional consortia to build more inclusive regional innovation ecosystems outside of traditional coastal hubs like Silicon Valley, Boston, and New York City.

Historically, NSF funding has been awarded to selective, doctoral degree-granting research universities with the Carnegie Classification of R1 and R2, but since launching, NSF’s TIP directorate has expressed an interest in helping a more diverse set of higher education institutions win funding, including by partnering with R1 and R2 classified research universities.

In an interview for New America, Erwin Gianchandani, the inaugural head of NSF’s TIP directorate, expressed special interest in creating more suport for community college pathways to jobs in the innovation economy.

“As the NSF Director has stressed from the day we launched the new TIP directorate, our vision is to create opportunities for all Americans to engage in the nation’s research and innovation enterprise,” Gianchandani told me in an email. “The NSF Engines, EPIIC, and ExLENT form a tightly integrated set of programs to do just that.”

According to Gianchandani, NSF’s new programs like EPIIC and ExLENT are meant to help increase the number of HBCUs, MSIs, community colleges and technical schools who are able to act as partners in the innovation ecosystem that the larger NSF Engines grant program aspires to promote.

Partnerships for Equitable Innovation Ecosystems

The Center on Education and Labor at New America has documented the growth, opportunities and challenges of emerging technology related education and training at community colleges.

The most successful emerging technology training programs have included partnerships with technology-based economic development organizations, research universities, and companies on the cutting edge of developing or deploying new technologies. However, colleges have reported challenges with building their internal infrastructure supporting partnerships including helping faculty and staff understand emerging technologies and regional innovation ecosystems as well as connecting with new kinds of employer and economic development partners.

Still, several successful partnership models have been documented. Many involve federal support. In Arizona, the Sun Corridor economic development entity helped Pima Community College in Arizona and autonomous vehicle company TuSimple partner to create the first autonomous vehicle certificate program in the country. A grant from the U.S. Department of Transportation’s University Transportation Centers program also helped the program and partners come together.

In Tennessee, the U.S. Department of Defense funded the America Cutting Edge program, a four-way workforce partnership in advanced manufacturing among Pellissippi State Community College and the University of Tennessee-Knoxville and two federally-funded research and development entities–the IACMI, the Composites ManufacturingUSA Institute, and Oakridge National Laboratory.

Employers, too, seek to boost new pathways to emerging technology jobs. Particularly following the murder of George Floyd in 2020, more businesses have expanded partnerships with community colleges, HBCUs, and MSIs to diversify the technology workforce, and more recently those efforts have Started to focus on emerging technology fields like those targeted by NSF and the CHIPS and Science Act.

In November, Amazon’s AWS Machine Learning University launched an “educator enablement” bootcamp to help professors at community colleges and HBCUs learn and teach AI. The bootcamp is modeled after the training that Amazon offers its own employees and includes a stipend awarded to participants.

Intel has partnered with the American Association of Community Colleges to expand AI workforce training programs at community colleges in all 50 states by next year. Intel CEO Pat Gelsinger, a community college graduate, has publicly advocated for more community colleges pathways to jobs in AI.

As the Biden Administration seeks to advance its economic competitiveness and emerging technology agenda through the implementation of the CHIPS and Science Act, programs like NSF EPIIC may be just what community colleges, HBCUs, and MSIs need to meet industry demand and expand equitable pathways to careers in emerging technology fields.

NSF will host an informational webinar about the EPIIC program on January 13. Grant proposals will be due in May 2023 with preliminary proposals due February 2023.