US Senate calls out NSF’s Support of HBCUs

In language included with a 2015 spending bill, legislators ask that HBCUs receive at least three NSF Innovation Corps awards.

WASHINGTON, D.C.  -- The U.S. Senate reportedly wants more robust support for science faculty and students at America’s historically Black colleges and universities but National Science Foundation officials don’t like being told how to do it, according to AAAS’s Science Insider.

In the article on a 2015 spending bill, elected and public education officials in Maryland indicated that the extent to which Black colleges have National Science Foundation (NSF) buy-in should correlate closely with their appearance on NSF’s award listings.

Jeffrey Mervis’s report in Science Insider reveals that only one historically Black college—Florida A&M University—ranks in the top 200 institutions receiving NSF research funding. Similarly, Mervis showed that while the NSF took issue with the Senate’s assertion that their six research directorates have been traditionally reluctant to support faculty at HBCU institutions, to date, only one of roughly 140 I-Corps awards has gone to an HBCU faculty member.

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