IBP Projects

This web portal highlights program and funding opportunities in STEM from K-12 through the graduate and post-doctoral level. The site provides a central repository for programs, funding opportunities, news, events, contacts, profiles, and best practices associated with STEM programs across the country. Students may use the site to search programs and funding opportunities, read student and faculty profiles, contact programs of interest, and add their name to our mailing list. Faculty may use the site to search contacts, identify complementary STEM programs and research efforts across the country, and publicize STEM news and events.

Funded by: National Science Foundation (NSF), National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA)

»»Read more about Pathways to Science

This project supports AGEP alliances in institutional and faculty level networking as well as the recruitment and retention of students. The agep.us website provides a central repository for programmatic information, news, events, profiles, and contacts for AGEP alliances across the country.

Funded by: National Science Foundation (NSF)

»»Read more about AGEP: Pathways and Connections

IBP's "Building the STEM Workforce: Pathways for Recruitment, Retention, and Career Development" project supports NASA's OSSI initiative. Through this project, IBP leads a series of recruitment and retention efforts with a national network of colleges and universities along with three additional organizations with similar projects. The OSSI initiative involves streamlining the application and selection process for NASA funded educational opportunities such as scholarships, internships, and fellowships, with an overall goal of strengthening the STEM workforce and increasing the number of students successfully pursuing degrees and careers in the sciences.

Funded by: National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA)

»»Read more about NASA One Stop Shop Initiative (OSSI)

»»View this project's Advisory Board

The Maine STEM website was developed in conjunction with the Maine STEM Collaborative. The Collaborative is a statewide initiative with two goals: 1) Ensuring that Maine students graduate with essential knowledge and skills in the STEM fields and 2) Encouraging Maine students to aspire to achieve higher degrees in the STEM fields. The Maine STEM web portal is a central repository of programs, news, events, profiles, and contacts in Maine. It also provides additional web presence for several ongoing state initiatives such as the Maine Girls Collaborative Project and the Forest Bioproducts Research Initiative.


»»Read more about Maine STEM

A strategic set of outreach activities and complementary digital tools to network and support students and faculty involved in the National Science Foundation's ocean sciences Research Experiences for Undergraduates (REU) programs.

Funded by: National Science Foundation (NSF)

»»View this project's Advisory Board

An REU-focused project to transfer and disseminate the effective student support and mentoring strategies that have been identified in recent research.

Funded by: National Science Foundation (NSF), U.S. Dept. of Defense

»»View this project's Advisory Board

The Minorities Striving and Pursuing Higher Degrees of Excellence in Earth Systems Science (MS PHD'S) is a national mentoring program in Earth Systems Sciences. Students are mentored by professional scientists, participate in professional society meetings and field trips, gain earth system science exposure, and benefit from networking and a virtual community.

Funded by: National Science Foundation (NSF), National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA)

»»Read more about MS PHD'S

The National Alliance for Doctoral Studies in the Mathematical Sciences is an alliance between a group of proven mentors in math sciences departments at several Ph.D. and master's granting universities together with mentors at math science departments at colleges and universities which serve a substantial number of underrepresented undergraduate students. IBP provides technical support to the National Mathematics Alliance, including website development, digital application tools, and data management.


»»Read more about National Alliance for Doctoral Studies in the Mathematics

Through its ongoing efforts, COSEE-OS has identified key areas for future growth, including: (i) facilitating the creation of Science, Technology, Engineering, and Mathematics (STEM) resources that are conceptually linked to ocean-climate content; (ii) scaling up ocean scientists' impacts by taking advantage of networking infrastructure; and (iii) building tools to assess the quality of consensus-based products created by diverse communities.

The Center will expand its successful model of creating software that is flexible, transferrable, and user focused for the ocean science community. OS will share this model via workshops for scientists at other COSEE's. OS will scale up its regional initiatives to have national impact, with a focus on rural and inland audiences. In addition, a new partnership with the Institute for Broadening Participation is improving engagement of underrepresented minorities in OS opportunities, and will serve as a model for the greater Network. By supporting existing educational programs, OS will assist two small, but prestigious, research laboratories -- Mount Desert Island Biological Laboratory and Bigelow Laboratory for Ocean Sciences -- in meeting their goal of providing effective research experiences for K-12 educators and "young scientists" in training. The Center's goal is to build Capacity nationwide, honing individuals' abilities to develop effective "Broader Impacts" (BI) activities. This is accomplished, in part, by engaging informal education institution partners such as Seacoast Science Center (SSC) and New England Aquarium (NEAq) to aid in the development of BI activities with scientists. The Center also supports the New England Ocean Sciences Education Collaborative (NEOSEC), a diverse network of over 40 organizations coordinated by NEAq, to build regional capacity by training its educators in planning and implementing BI activities for ocean scientists. This ensures that the content and products of current ocean science research can efficiently reach a broad audience in a timely fashion.

An NSF Math and Science Partnership project to redesign and implement physical science curriculum at the middle school level.

As part of a two-year effort to identify potential interaction between lobster fishing gear and endangered whales along the coast of Maine, we are mapping fishing effort. The goal of stage 1 if the project is to create a spatially and temporally accurate representation of lobster fishing activity along the Maine coast. Using a dasymetric mapping technique, seafloor imagery-derived products including bathymetry and surficial geology, will be used to extrapolate the fishing data to finer levels of spatial aggregation. The outcome of this work will be the most complete representation to date of where and when lobster fishing takes place, and will become a critical input to a model of potential whale-lobster gear interactions.


»»Read more about Analysis of Potential Interaction Whale-Lobster Gear Interaction

The Integrative Graduate Education and Research Traineeship (IGERT) program employs interdisciplinary graduate programs to train scientists and engineers to address the global questions of the future. The IGERT National Recruitment project's goals were to help IGERT faculty and Pis find students that are right for their programs, and to broaden participation in IGERT by helping underrepresented groups and small institutions participate in IGERT.

Funded by: National Science Foundation (NSF)

»»Read more about The IGERT National Recruitment Project

VCCEMP provides underrepresented minority 4th-5th graders and their classroom teachers with increased exposure to earth system science. The project engages teachers in the use of digital curriculum resources such as DWEL, DLESE, and NSDL. It also uses virtual mentoring activities to pair 4th and 5th grade students with undergraduate and graduate MS PHD'S program participants.


»»Read more about Virtual Classroom and Community Engagement Mentoring Project (VCCEMP)