Assistance program
Minority Science and Engineering Improvement
$93.2 Million committed in FY2018–FY2026
- Agency
- Office of Postsecondary Education, Education, Department of
- Assistance
- Project Grants
- CFDA number
- 84.120
- What it does
- To (1) effect long-range improvement in science and engineering education at predominantly minority institutions and (2) increase the participation of underrepresented ethnic minorities, particularly minority women, in scientific and technological careers.
- Who benefits
- Private or public accredited (or successfully working toward accreditation) 2- and 4-year institutions of higher education whose enrollments of a single minority or a combination of minorities exceed 50 percent of the total enrollment. The term minorities refer to American Indian; Alaskan Native; Native Hawaiian, Black (not of Hispanic origin); Hispanic (including persons of Mexican, Puerto Rican, Cuban, and Central or South American origin); Pacific Islander; or other ethnic group who are underrepresented in science and engineering.
- Who applies
- Private and public nonprofit accredited (or successfully working toward accreditation) institutions of higher education that award baccalaureate degrees; and are minority institutions; public or private accredited (or successfully working toward accreditation) nonprofit institutions of higher education that award associate degrees, and are minority institutions that have a curriculum that includes science and engineering subjects; and enters into a partnership with public or private nonprofit institutions of higher education that award baccalaureate degrees in science or engineering. Applications may also be submitted by nonprofit science-oriented organizations, professional scientific societies, and institutions of higher education that award baccalaureate degrees, that provide a needed service to a group of minority institutions; or provide in-service training for project directors, scientists, and engineers from minority institutions; or consortia of organizations, that provide needed services to one or more minority institutions, the membership of which may include: institutions of higher education which have a curriculum in science or engineering; institutions of higher education that have graduate or professional programs in science or engineering; research laboratories of, or under contract with the Department of Energy; private organizations that have science or engineering facilities; or quasi-governmental entities that have a significant scientific or engineering mission.
- Authorized by
- Higher Education Act of 1965, as amended, Title III, Part E, Subpart 1
- Program site
- http://www.ed.gov/programs/iduesmsi/. ↗
Committed by fiscal year
* FY2026 is year-to-date — the fiscal year is still in progress, so its total is still filling in. The striped band and dashed line mark that provisional stretch.
Top recipients
By dollars committed.
How to read these numbers
- Committed through this program
Money committed under this assistance listing (its CFDA program), counted in the year each action happened.
- How it's paid
Most programs pay out one way — a grant, or a direct payment to individuals; the flow bar only appears when a program genuinely mixes types.
- Some recipients aren't itemized
For entitlement programs like Social Security and Medicare, the government reports one aggregate instead of naming tens of millions of people, so the recipient roster isn't part of the public record.
- Awards, counted once
An award count is the number of distinct awards with at least one action that year — each counted once, however many times it was amended.
- The colored bars
Every bar on this page splits by how the money moves:
Direct payments