UMEB: Recruiting Native Americans into Environmental Science

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0203404PierottiThis project involves collaboration between three universities in Kansasand will train a number of Native American undergraduates in researchtechniques related to ecology and environmental science. Unlike manyprograms that offer only a brief research experience, this program will workwith students over a 2-4 year period and mentor them through to graduationwith a bachelor's degree. The PIs on this program have graduated more than25 Native Americans over the last 7 years, and most of these graduates havegone on to attend graduate school.This award includes a supplement from the Central and Eastern Europe Program of NSF's Office of International Science and Engineering to fund student and mentor travel to Siberia for research on indigenous knowledge as part of a collaboration with scientists and students at Gorno-Altaisk State University.The significance of this program lies in recent discoveries that Indigenouscommunities represent stores of knowledge that both add to and complimentscientific knowledge obtained through the methods of the Western scientifictradition, e.g. indigenous knowledge 1) reveals connections betweenecological communities that are studied separately and remain unlinkedunder Western scientific paradigms, and 2) give insight into the role ofhigh quality individuals within population dynamics that are obscured byWestern traditions of population level thinking. Students completing thisprogram will be better prepared to conduct scientific research within thecontext of indigenous knowledge than any other group. Such approaches cansimultaneously increase scientific awareness without losing sight ofspiritual dimensions of human experience.