The National Academy of Engineering (NAE) created the Grand Challenges Scholars Program (GCSP) to educate students in how to engineer solutions to the most pressing problems impacting humanity and biodiversity. Such engineering can involve the planning, design, construction, and operation of useful products, processes, or systems to address the problem. Student scholars in the NAE GCSP complete a combined curricular and extra-curricular program with 5 competencies:

1. Research/creative: Mentored research or project experience related to a Grand Challenge to enhance technical competence and creativity.

2. Multidisciplinary: Understanding gained through experience of the multidisciplinary character of implementable and viable Grand Challenge solutions

3. Business/entrepreneurship: Understanding gained through experience that viable business models are necessary for successful implementation of Grand Challenge solutions

4. Multicultural: Understanding gained through experience that serious consideration of cultural issues is mandatory for all viable Grand Challenge solutions

5. Social consciousness: Deepen social consciousness and motivation to address societal problems, often gained through service learning, because serving people is the vision served by the Grand Challenges
ESF joined the prestigious NAE GCSP in 2014. Students satisfying these 5 components obtain a designation of completion of the ESF NAE GCSP on their college transcripts.

This program fits within ESF's educational mission to advance knowledge and skills to promote the leadership necessary for the stewardship of both the natural and designed environments, and is a form of humanitarian engineering.