The Integrative Graduate Education and Research Traineeship (IGERT) program has been developed to meet the challenges of educating U.S. Ph.D. scientists and engineers with interdisciplinary backgrounds, deep knowledge in chosen disciplines, and technical, professional, and personal skills. The program is intended to establish new models for graduate education and training in a fertile environment for collaborative research that transcends traditional disciplinary boundaries. It is also intended to facilitate diversity in student participation and preparation, and to contribute to a world-class, broadly inclusive, and globally engaged science and engineering workforce.

It is required that the training program explicitly propose new models in graduate education in which students are engaged in an environment that supports innovation; learn through hands-on experience how their own research may contribute in new ways to benefit society; and to learn the processes for the successful implementation of such contributions.

There is a limit of one (1) proposal that may be submitted by an institution either as a single institution or as a lead institution in a multi-institution proposal.

Preproposals must be submitted to the associate dean for research in the college of the lead principal investigator by close of business on Monday, March 19. Centers that do not report to a college should submit preproposals to the VPR office for review by Monday, March 19. The associate deans will forward the preproposals to the VPR office. A review committee will choose the project to be forwarded to NSF.

Your pre-proposal should contain the following information:

• Summary of the proposal (no more than 2 pages) highlighting the intellectual merits of the proposal
• Tentative list of participants (internal and external collaborators)
• Explain why your proposal would be competitive (1 page) -- explain the strengths and uniqueness of your proposal, given the review criteria.
• Explain how your proposal would address NSF’s Broader Impacts requirement (half page)
• Draft budget. Please include a half page suggestion describing the commitment that the institution will make to facilitating and furthering project plans and goals [per the RFP].