inter-Science of Learning Centers Conference

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This proposal requests funds to support the annual Inter-Science of Learning Centers (i-SLC) Conference, organized by the graduate students and postdoctoral fellows of the 6 Science of Learning Centers (SLCs). This event has served as a vital venue for exchanging research findings across the SLCs, sharing resources and stimulating career development opportunities for Center trainees. This highly productive activity has resulted in cross-center collaborations, including cross-center student exchanges for additional training in other laboratories. This year, the conference will be hosted by the NSF-funded Temporal Dynamics of Learning Center (TDLC) in San Diego, CA on April 21-23, 2012. To capitalize on the host-center's primary research focus on the temporal dynamics of learning and how time and timing influences learning, the iSLC 2012 will have the general theme of "Time, Mind, and Education Interwined". Requested funds will be used to pay for conference facilities at the University of California San Diego (UCSD) and to cover participants' costs of attending, including travel and per diem Earlier iSLC conferences experiment in various ways to maximize the effectiveness with which the meeting meets its objectives, and each evolution of this event reflects deliberate efforts to improve the meeting based on feedback from prior meetings. Individual students and postdoctoral fellows attending iSLC will benefit from visiting UCSD, learning from experiences of their peers, and by being exposed to new and alternative methodologies and paradigms. Most importantly, they will be provided with opportunities to participate actively in the cross-center, and inter-disciplinary network that will provide support for them in their careers. Since most graduate students and postdoctoral fellows typically attend field-specific conferences with little opportunity to interact with peers outside of their disciplinary niches, this annual event is addressing the need to provide the infrastructure for a national, and even international, interdisciplinary network of young scholars who are likely to continue to cooperate and collaborate throughout their future careers. This year, the trainees are proactively implementing several strategies to broaden the participation of underrepresented minorities in science, by leveraging on-going efforts at their respective centers.