The Office of Naval Research (ONR) seeks a broad range of applications for augmenting existing or developing innovative solutions that directly maintain, or cultivate a diverse, world-class STEM workforce in order to maintain the U.S. Navy and Marine Corps’ technological superiority. The goal of any proposed effort must provide solutions that will establish and maintain pathways of diverse U.S. citizens who are interested in uniformed or civilian DoN STEM workforce opportunities.

As the capacity of the DoN Science and Technology (S&T) workforce is interconnected with the basic research enterprise and STEM education system, ONR recognizes the need to support efforts that can jointly improve STEM student outcomes and align educational efforts with Naval S&T current and future workforce needs. This announcement explicitly encourages projects that improve the capacity of education systems and communities to create impactful STEM educational experiences for students and workers. Submissions are encouraged to consider including active learning approaches and incorporating 21st century skill development. Projects must aim to increase student and worker engagement in STEM and enhance people with needed Naval STEM capabilities. ONR encourages applications to utilize current STEM educational research for informing project design and advancing our understanding of how and why people choose STEM careers and opportunities of Naval relevance.

While this announcement is relevant for any stage of the STEM educational system, funding efforts will be targeted primarily toward projects addressing the below communities or any combination of these communities:

• Secondary education communities
• Post-Secondary communities
• Informal science communities;
• Current Naval STEM workforce communities.

Project scope may range in size and complexity. Projects that are already established with prior funding sources or have established stakeholder partnerships are especially encouraged to consider the following scope areas:

• Develop and implement exploratory pilot projects that seek to create new educational experiences within educational and training communities.
• Develop larger cohesive STEM education and training activities that strengthen the capacity of regional communities and stakeholders to improve STEM education and training.
• Establish meetings of stakeholders that must seek to connect relevant people and organizations to explicitly develop broader projects for affecting entire communities.