About
Undergraduate Education (DUE)
Mission: To promote excellence in undergraduate science, technology, engineering, and mathematics (STEM) education for all students.
The Division accomplishes its mission through the following goals and strategies:
Goals |
Strategies |
Provide Leadership |
- Promote cutting-edge efforts, risk-taking, and continuous innovation in developing new practices and ideas.
- Help shape national priorities to further educational innovation and research.
- Direct efforts to increase the diversity of STEM communities.
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Support Curriculum Development |
- Stimulate and support research on learning.
- Promote development of exemplary materials and strategies for education.
- Support model assessment programs and practices.
- Effect broad dissemination of effective pedagogy and materials.
- Enable long-term sustainability of effective activities.
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Prepare the Workforce |
- Promote technological, quantitative, and scientific literacy.
- Support an increase in diversity, size, and quality of the next generation of STEM professionals who enter the workforce with two- or four-year degrees or who continue their studies in graduate and professional schools.
- Invest in the nation's future K-12 teacher workforce.
- Fund research to evaluate and improve workforce initiatives.
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Foster Connections |
- Facilitate communication across disciplinary boundaries.
- Foster connections between all educational levels from K-12 through graduate school and between academia, industry, and professional societies.
- Encourage faculty to combine teaching and discipline-based research.
- Collaborate with research communities and with NSF research directorates.
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DUE's current programs, which are described in the documents on this Web site, constitute a comprehensive approach to strengthening STEM education at two- and four-year colleges and universities by improving curricula, instruction, laboratories, infrastructure, assessment, diversity of students and faculty, and collaborations. These programs encompass most of the activities supported by the Division; however, additional ideas and mechanisms will be considered by DUE staff at any time.
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