Scholar's Award: Developing Innovators and Expertise for Fostering Innovation

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Developing Innovators and Expertise for Fostering InnovationCurrently, a range of U.S. stakeholders are investing billions of dollars collectively in the construction of innovation centers and the reform of STEM education. The project investigates how innovation theorists in the past wrestled with and framed the challenges that continue to vex educators, policymakers, and practitioners engaged in present initiatives. How can governments foster private research and development in a global economy? How can researchers be trained for entrepreneurial careers irrespective of disciplinary specialty? In what ways does a focus on commercialization, entrepreneurship, and its products alter, and potentially narrow, what counts as valuable knowledge? How can STEM participation be made more diverse, and will that diversity result in unforeseen discoveries that would not have occurred otherwise?This project traces the impact of innovation theorists on universities, corporate research centers, and federal agencies during the 1960s to the 1980s and on today?s proliferation of local, regional, and national innovation initiatives. The PI will explore how these theorists developed forms of expertise designed to improve STEM participation and performance by fostering creativity, entrepreneurialism, interdisciplinary, and social relevance in technoscientific practitioners. Findings will be disseminated via a book, a graduate student seminar, and a workshop directed at STEM graduate students and policymakers.