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NSF Program
The Alliances for Graduate Education and the Professoriate (AGEP) at Michigan State University (MSU) is a National Science Foundation program that supports recruitment, retention, and graduation of U. S. students in doctoral programs of the natural and social sciences, mathematics, and engineering. The focus of AGEP places special emphasis on a fully inclusive recruitment and development of students from U. S. population groups historically underrepresented in fields of the sciences, technology, engineering and mathematics (STEM); and the social, behavioral, and economic (SBE) sciences. A goal of AGEP is to promote changes that transform U. S. universities to embrace the responsibility of substantially increasing the number of underrepresented U. S. minorities who will enter the professoriate in STEM and SBE disciplines. Specific AGEP program objectives are: (1) to develop and implement innovative models for recruiting, mentoring, and retaining underrepresented U. S. minority students in STEM and SBE doctoral programs, and (2) to develop effective strategies to identify and support underrepresented U. S. minority students who want to pursue academic careers.
Michigan AGEP Alliance
The four public research universities in the State of Michigan, i.e. Michigan State University, University of Michigan, Wayne State University, and Western Michigan University, form the Michigan AGEP Alliance (MAA). The purpose of the MAA is to collaborate to achieve the objectives and the common goals of the NSF program by sharing human and material resources, building networks of student interactions, and experimenting to find what works to catalyze transformation of these academies. The Michigan AGEP Alliance participants gather each Spring and Fall for a MAA Conference, hosted by one of the campuses, to build student networks and provide supportive activities, workshops, and other sessions for each stage of career planning and development. The emphasis is always on promoting success.
AGEP at MSU
The AGEP program at Michigan State University applies funds from the NSF and The Graduate School to provide substantial support for student recruitment, career development, and to foster the emergence of a racially and culturally inclusive community of scholars among graduate students in STEM and SBE disciplines. A feature of this community is once monthly meetings to develop dialog across disciplines and to promote fellowship among peers in addition to sharing information that is key to success in graduate training. The Graduate School leverages AGEP funding to support direct faculty involvement in student recruitment, and to establish educational collaborations with faculty at colleges and universities that have substantial enrollments of population groups that are a focus of the NSF program goals. These are activities aimed to build trust between faculties of MSU and focal institutions for recruitment, with the goal to establish a steady stream of students into successful graduate studies at MSU and other universities of the Michigan Alliance.
Graduate students and faculty who participate in building the AGEP Community at MSU will provide a key to changing the culture of U. S. colleges and universities to embrace building world-class STEM and SBE faculties who fully reflect the diversity in race, gender, culture and intellectual talent of the U. S population.