While the overwhelming majority of scientists agree global warming is due to human activities, only about half of Americans agree with this concept. This disparity must be breached by increasing communication between scientists and the general public. To be effective in this role, future scientists must be trained to communicate effectively with non-technical audiences. The NSF Graduate STEM Fellows in K-12 education (GK-12) program provides funding for training graduate students in this role. Through the GK-12 program, graduate fellows bring their science, technology, engineering, and mathematics (STEM) research practice, findings and enthusiasm to K-12 learning settings so that teachers and students are more directly exposed to the ways that scientists use existing knowledge to generate new discoveries, how these discoveries are applied in the real world and what it means to be a STEM professional. Graduate students receive training in communicating STEM subjects to technical and non-technical audiences, leadership, team building, and teaching. Furthermore, the GK-12 program provides institutions of higher education with an opportunity to transform the conventional graduate education by infusing and sustaining GK-12-like activities in their graduate programs. Although few GK-12 programs are able to continue beyond initial NSF funding, preliminary findings from an overall program evaluation indicate that over four-fifths of Principal Investigators report that they plan to sustain some elements of the program that will have a positive effect on the training of graduate students to be effective communicators and to create linkages with the general public. The goal of this session is to consider the most effective ways to sustain GK-12-like activities after initial NSF funding is exhausted. Each speaker will summarize the challenges faced and strategies used in sustaining their individual project.