Evaluation of NSF's Program of Grants for Vertical Integration of Research and Education in the Mathematical Sciences (VIGRE) (2009) / Chapter Skim
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4 Administering, Monitoring, and Assessing the Program
4 Administering, Monitoring, and Assessing the Program
Pages 47-56
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From page 47... ...
the anticipated size of the graduate program should this award be received. This information will provide baseline data to be used in subsequent performance assessments.1 According to the 1999 RFP, the requested data appendix was to include a new element, the amount of funding by federal agencies for graduate students and for postdoctorates in each of the previous 5 years.
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From page 48... ...
This should include information on career paths of VIGRE supported graduate students and postdocs.5 The most current proposal solicitations state these information requirements as follows: Performance Assessment Plan. Each proposal should describe a plan to assess the progress towards the achievement of the EMSW21 [Enhancing the Mathematical Sciences Workforce in the 21st Century]
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From page 49... ...
This should include information on career paths of VIGRE supported graduate students and postdocs. Trainee Data.
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From page 50... ...
for graduate students; and about half of our postdoctoral positions have been downgraded to high-teaching-load lectureships. One reason for these rather drastic cutbacks has been our decision to keep our commitments to current VIGRE postdocs and VIGRE graduate trainees." • "Obviously, our graduate and postdoctoral fellowships will not be maintained." • "We had to drastically decrease the number of admitted graduate students.
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From page 51... ...
, undergraduate students, graduate students, postdoctoral fellows, faculty, and relevant administrators. In advance of a pre-award site visit, DMS sends the department to be visited a set of basic questions to be addressed, as shown in Box 4-1.
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From page 52... ...
• NSF provided appropriate guidance to the site visitors as to how to conduct the visit, and site visitors thought that NSF program managers participated at the appropriate level during the site visits. • Site-visit teams met with all the appropriate groups at the institution being evaluated.
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All information was useful for the overview of the success or problems of the previous VIGRE award." • "Two NSF program officers talked with me about questions regarding the VIGRE program before we went on the site visits. One stressed the importance of mentoring the postdocs and graduate students.
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From page 54... ...
. By contrast, the 3rd-year site visits are very uniform, as noted previously.
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From page 55... ...
By 2000, the award letters contained the following description of data needed in each annual report: • "The previous institution and the placement institution for each recipient of a VIGRE stipend during the past year." • "A list of the faculty who participated in the VIGRE program during the past year, and their roles in the project." The committee notes that the information collected by NSF during the application process differs from the information collected during the reporting phase, and it is not clear how helpful some of the data in the annual reports are. Tracking student placement, for example, might not be a good indicator because the students in programs with VIGRE awards are often at top institutions, meaning that many of them would be well placed regardless of whether or not the department had a VIGRE program.
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