The William T. Grant Scholars Program supports career development for promising early-career researchers. The program funds five-year research and mentoring plans that significantly expand researchers’ expertise in new disciplines, methods, and content areas.

Applicants should have a track record of conducting high-quality research and an interest in pursuing a significant shift in their trajectories as researchers. We recognize that early-career researchers are rarely given incentives or support to take measured risks in their work, so this award includes a mentoring component, as well as a supportive academic community.

Awards are based on applicants’ potential to become influential researchers, as well as their plans to expand their expertise in new and significant ways. The application should make a cohesive argument for how the applicant will expand his or her expertise. The research plan should evolve in conjunction with the development of new expertise, and the mentoring plan should describe how the proposed mentors will support applicants in acquiring that expertise. Proposed research plans must address questions that are relevant to policy and practice in the Foundation’s focus areas.

This five-day workshop will orient participants to the content and structure of the core PSID interview, its special topics modules, and its supplemental studies, including the Child Development Supplement (CDS), the Transition into Adulthood Supplement (TAS), and the 2013 Rosters and Transfers Module. In addition we will discuss topics including the recently-released genomics data collected from children and primary caregivers in CDS as well as new data files which explain family relationships and demographic characteristics over time.

The Panel Study of Income Dynamics (PSID), begun in 1968, is the world’s longest-running multigenerational household panel study. It is used to investigate scientific and policy questions about life course trajectories in health and well-being, intergenerational social and economic mobility, income and wealth inequality, family investments in children, neighborhood effects on opportunity and achievement, and many other topics.

Read the full workshop description here.

Apply using the Summer Program Portal (join the waitlist for this workshop) at https://cvent.me/ZLQP91. Applicants must also upload the following materials to https://forms.gle/sG4h9Aoix79theY9A

Join the National Academies Science, Engineering, and Medicine (NASEM)  for Integrating the Human Sciences to Scale Societal Responses to Environmental Change: A Workshop to explore the potential for synthesizing the human sciences (e.g., social, behavioral, psychological, political, organizational) to develop critical societal capacities for and responses to climate change. The workshop will take place March 23-23th at 4:00 PM ET.

The 2-day, virtual public workshop will consider how to integrate, align, and converge the broad mix of social, behavioral, and cognitive sciences to produce new insights and inform efforts for enhanced human responses to environmental change. Earth System Science increasingly incorporates human systems in its analysis of climate change, but social, behavioral, and social sciences have yet to align internally in prioritizing and addressing the range of challenges faced by individuals and communities in responding to the various stresses and opportunities posed by climate change.

CSDE Trainee Lauren Woycynzynski and colleagues at UCLA were recently highlighted in the New York Times for their newly released database on COVID-related prison deaths.  The data and the story in the New York Times observe how COVID-related deaths dramatically surged inside U.S. prisons. Thank you to Lauren and team for this invaluable research and data!  Earlier efforts on this project also benefited from CSDE Trainee Neal Marquez.  Kudos all around!

On February 14, the National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine (NASEM) held a webinar marking the release of a report on Advancing Antiracism, Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion in STEMM Organizations. The report aims to identify structural barriers to participation in science, technology, engineering, math, and medicine (STEMM) by minoritized individuals and provides recommendations on how the scientific community can instigate meaningful changes to remove these barriers and instill principles of antiracism, diversity, equity, and inclusion (ADEI).

The report offers the following recommendations to the scientific community:

• Federal funding agencies and other grantmaking organizations should increase funding to better understand how Historically Black Colleges and Universities (HBCUs) and Tribal Colleges and Universities (TCUs) support their students and faculty and how to translate the principles of minority-serving institutions (MSIs) to predominantly White institutions.
• Statistical agencies such as the National Center for Science and Engineering Statistics (NCSES) and the National Center for Education Statistics (NCES) should collect demographic data of students considering STEMM degrees.
• Leaders and decisionmakers at STEMM organizations should increase admission, hiring, and inclusion of minoritized individuals. They should also invest in evidence-based programs that connect minoritized individuals to peers and internal resources, connect with high-status professionals, and develop institutional norms that promote inclusion.
• STEMM organizations should collect data on the decisions of their leadership and how gatekeeping may occur within organizations and add antiracist responsibilities to leadership positions.
• Team leaders at scientific organizations should intentionally develop inclusive conditions within the work environments.
• Organizational leaders should develop processes to evaluate the role of individual bias and discrimination in organizational practices. They should also anticipate the potential for internal resistance to ADEI efforts and respond accordingly.
• Leaders of STEMM organizations should use a framework to evaluate norms and values of the institution and identify specific ways to address norms that impede diversity.

The report can be read in full on the NASEM website.

The training program has two main components. The week-long workshop in Washington, D.C. in June 2023 focuses on the role of research on the policy process and techniques for effective communication of research findings to decisionmakers, media, and nontechnical audiences. During the 2023-2024 academic year, participants will apply the lessons learned during the workshop in their preparation of two policy communication materials (for example, policy briefs, blogs, or op-eds) based on their dissertations or related research topics. We are inviting applications from U.S. citizens and permanent residents (Green Card holders) who are between their 3rd and 5th year of doctoral studies in demography, reproductive health, or population health.