Planning Grant: Developing a Strategic Plan and Infrastructure Needs Assessment for the CICHAZ Field Station

得克萨斯农工大学获得一笔赠款，用于支持“Aguazarca”(CICHAZ：www.cichaz.org)中心(CICHAZ：www.cichaz.org)制定未来改善基础设施的战略计划，以继续服务于不同的国际生活和社会科学家群体，以及教育和外展项目。CICHAZ位于墨西哥一个生物和文化多样性很高但缺乏学术和研究机构的地区，已成为社会科学、淡水生态学和环境生物学多学科研究的中心。CICHAZ目前的需要是制定计划，为一个现代外勤站提供基础设施和设备，为越来越多的研究人员提供服务，并开展外联工作。这一规划项目有两个主要目标：(1)使CICHAZ人员能够访问包括NSF FSML支持的站在内的已建立的生产性现场站，并与其领导人合作，学习具有研究和教育任务的站的最佳实践；(2)举办研讨会，聚集来自美墨边境两侧的利益攸关方，包括教育和研究背景，以及CICHAZ的生命科学和社会科学观点，以便制定战略计划。最终，从访问其他站点和讲习班中学到的做法将最终形成一个五年计划和更多具有里程碑意义的长期目标，以实现这些目标。作为一个国际研究站，肩负着强大的外展使命，特别关注美国和墨西哥之间的研究和教育关系，该现场站的长期倡议的更广泛影响包括为美国和墨西哥的本科生提供研究经验，以及为当地初中生提供指导计划。这一规划工作将具体包括制定有助于实现这些目标的战略的活动。

Texas A&M University is awarded a grant to support the Centro de Investigaciones Científicas de las Huastecas "Aguazarca" (CICHAZ: www.cichaz.org) in developing a strategic plan for future improvements to infrastructure to continue to serve a diverse group of international life and social scientists as well as educational and outreach programs. Located in a region of Mexico with high biological and cultural diversity but devoid of academic and research institutions, CICHAZ has become a hub for multi-disciplinary research on social sciences, freshwater ecology, and environmental biology. The current need for CICHAZ is to develop plans for providing the infrastructure and equipment for a contemporary field station that will serve a growing group of researchers as well as outreach efforts. This planning project has two primary objectives: (1) enable CICHAZ personnel to visit established, productive field stations including NSF FSML supported stations and work with their leaders to learn best practices for stations with research and education missions and (2) to hold workshops that will bring together stakeholders from both sides of the US-Mexico border, both education and research backgrounds, and both life science and social science perspectives at CICHAZ in order to develop a strategic plan. Ultimately, the practices learned from visiting other stations together with the workshops will culminate in a 5-year plan and additional long-term objects with landmarks for achieving those objectives. As an international research station with a strong outreach mission and particular focus on research and educational relationships between the U.S. and Mexico, the broader impacts of the longer-term initiatives of the field station include research experiences for US and Mexican undergraduates and a mentoring program for local junior and high school students. This planning effort will specifically include activities to develop strategy that will help to achieve these goals.