CI-T: Minority-Serving Institutions Cyberinfrastructure Institute [MSI C(I)2]: Bringing Minority Serving Institution Faculty into the Cyberinfrastructure and e-Science Communities

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PROJECT ABSTRACT: To maximize the vast research and education opportunities and the new way of doing science enabled by the emerging cyberinfrastructure, this initiative will help ensure that a diverse group of scientists, engineers, and educators from historically underrepresented minority institutions are actively engaged in the development or use of new cyberinfrastructure (CI) tools, strategies, processes, and resources. The Minority-serving Institutions Cyberinfrastructure Institute (MSI CI2) initiative will launch the strategic planning process with national CI leaders, host residential and online training employing active learning models, and establish a virtual community of e-Science practice as strategies for building the capacity of MSI faculty to fully exploit CI. MSI CI2 will build and enhance meaningful collaborations between MSIs and national CI initiatives to engage minority faculty and students in e-science and the international CI community. Initiative goals are to: (1) Develop the MSI faculty and technical staff CI and e-Science training and support program; (2) Build an MSI e-Science community of practice; and (3) Establish the MSI CI Institute portal. The project will bring together national leaders in CI with leadership of the three MSI communities to develop and provide curricula for a series of "train-the-trainer" sessions, a semester long internet course, seminars over the internet and at MSIs, and a summer residential institute. Mentors from the CI community will help guide individual MSI faculty projects. In addition, the project will include "Executive Awareness" activities for MSI presidents and their leadership teams.Broader Impact: This initiative lays the foundation for a scalable, national effort in which a representative group of stakeholders (in this case, key CI leaders and the broadest coalition of minority serving institutions in American higher education) act as the "human middleware" necessary to the development of a universally accessible and comprehensive infrastructure with the capacity to significantly accelerate the discovery and dissemination of scientific knowledge and further the national research agenda. This initiative will provide a model for the development of the MSI capacity to prepare underrepresented minority students for a future in CI-enabled science, the knowledge-based economy, and the scientific professoriate. Currently, MSIs are a significant source of science talent producing one-third (33 percent) of the minority baccalaureates in science. This is critical for the nation's future STEM (Science, Technology, Engineering and Mathematics) workforce and the nation's global leadership in science and engineering. Through the three member organizations that comprise the Alliance for Equity in Higher Education (the Hispanic Association of Colleges and Universities, the National Association for Equal Opportunity in Higher Education, and the American Indian Higher Education Consortium), at least 335 Minority Serving Institutions could be impacted under full implementation of the Institute.