EAGER Germination: Crystallizing Transformative Ideas by Seeding a Diverse Knowledge Community

伊利诺伊大学的这项提案旨在开发一个学习框架和相关平台，以增加催生变革性研究想法的可能性，这些想法将为应对重要的社会挑战打开新的机会。尽管该框架是为任何研究领域设计的，但出于评估目的，本项目侧重于应对全球气候变化的跨学科挑战。目标受众是晚期研究生、早期教师和博士后学者，他们有潜力参与跨机构跨学科研究，将来自美国印第安人部落学院、历史上的黑人学院和大学、为西班牙裔服务的学院和大学以及土地赠与大学的学者联系起来。应对气候变化的能力是一个根本性的重要问题，该项目有机会产生应对这一挑战的新办法。以一种有意义的方式纳入少数群体服务机构，给予它们真正的发言权，也在这一调查领域开辟了新的天地。在解决根本的科学挑战时，促进包括多种声音的程序将有助于在美国许多与重要科学问题有利害关系的团体中建立一个共同体。预期的项目结果将是：(1)向资助机构提出跨机构、跨学科的建议；(2)可持续的跨机构和跨学科网络，以促进未来的研究；(3)促进前两个结果的程序以及证明其有效性、可扩展性和适应性的证据，超越参与研究的机构。一个由来自美国印第安人高等教育委员会(AIHEC)、西班牙裔学院和大学协会(HACU)和全国高等教育机会均等协会(NAFEO)的研究和STEM主任和其他人员、国家超级计算应用中心(NCSA)的主任和研究科学家以及其他学者和程序专家组成的团队将为框架的开发和实施做出贡献。

This proposal from the University of Illinois aims to develop a learning framework and associated platforms that will increase the probability of germinating transformative research ideas that will open new opportunities to address important societal challenges. Although the framework is designed for any research domain, for evaluation purposes this project focuses on the interdisciplinary challenge of resilience to global climate change. The target audiences are late stage graduate students, early stage faculty, and postdoctoral scholars who show potential for engaging in cross-institutional interdisciplinary research linking scholars from American Indian Tribal Colleges, Historically Black Colleges and Universities, Hispanic-Serving Colleges and Universities, and Land Grant Universities. Resilience to climate change is a fundamentally important issue and this project has the opportunity to generate new approaches to this challenge. The inclusion of minority serving institutions in a meaningful way that gives them true voice breaks new ground in this area of inquiry as well. Procedures that facilitate including multiple voices when addressing fundamental scientific challenges will be a contribution to building a commonwealth among the many groups in the US who have stakes in important scientific issues. Expected project outcomes will be: (1) Cross-institutional, interdisciplinary proposals to funding agencies; (2) Sustainable cross-institutional and interdisciplinary networks to promote future research; (3) A procedure for facilitating the first two outcomes and evidence for its efficacy, scalability, and adaptability beyond the institutions involved in the study. A team composed of research and STEM directors and other personnel from the American Indian Higher Education Council (AIHEC), the Hispanic Association of Colleges and Universities (HACU), and the National Association for Equal Opportunity in Higher Education (NAFEO), and directors and research scientists from the National Center for Supercomputing Applications (NCSA), as well as other scholars and process experts will contribute to the development and implementation of the framework.