Supporting Indigenous scholars as data stewards and leaders in STEM

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This award was provided as part of NSF's Social, Behavioral and Economic Sciences Postdoctoral Research Fellowships (SPRF) program. This award is also funded by the NSF's Alliances for Graduate Education and the Professoriate program (AGEP), which targets increasing the number of historically underrepresented minority faculty in STEM and STEM education research disciplines. The goal of the SPRF program is to prepare promising, early career doctoral-level scientists for scientific careers in academia, industry or private sector, and government. SPRF awards involve two years of training under the sponsorship of established scientists and encourage Postdoctoral Fellows to perform independent research. NSF seeks to promote the participation of scientists from all segments of the scientific community, including those from underrepresented groups, in its research programs and activities; the postdoctoral period is considered to be an important level of professional development in attaining this goal. Each Postdoctoral Fellow must address important scientific questions that advance their respective disciplinary fields. Under the primary sponsorship of Dr. Stephanie Russo Carroll (Rainie) at the University of Arizona Native Nations Institute, and affiliate sponsorship from Colorado State University's Department of Forest and Rangeland Stewardship, this postdoctoral fellowship award supports an early career scientist with the opportunity to lead a national assessment of ethical standards for research conduct in relation to Indigenous communities and knowledge systems. We currently lack comprehensive institutional standards for responsible practices regarding science, technology, engineering, and mathematics (STEM) research that engages Indigenous knowledge systems and communities. Through studying existing ethics protocols and practices guiding U.S. tribal and federal agency science research and identifying Indigenous community-defined priorities regarding ethical research practice, this research aims to provide the groundwork for developing formal policies and research guidelines to fill this gap. The project entitled, Supporting Indigenous Scholars As Data Stewards and Leaders in STEM, serves to advance knowledge in the sciences by identifying factors that support or inhibit effective ethical research engagement with Indigenous communities and diverse knowledge systems in scientific research. Through the following objectives and research questions this project supports a shift from historic, extractive research models with little to no participation of or benefit to Indigenous community members, to research standards that strengthen Indigenous data governance and capacity: (1) What factors and indicators demonstrate effective and ethically responsible research practice in Indigenous communities? Identified through collaboration with an expert-practitioner advisory panel of Indigenous scientific leaders, policy experts, and experts on Indigenous ethics in research, to co-design and validate a methods protocol and survey instrument for determining factors that drive or inhibit ethical and effective research and data management in Indigenous communities. (2) To what extent are these factors and indicators represented in codes of ethics and responsible research guidelines currently available to U.S. tribal, agency, and academic researchers? Determined through a comprehensive, systematic, comparative analysis of existing research protocols and codes of ethics, including identifying priorities and gaps in codes of ethics to inform policy. (3) What barriers to implementing responsible research practice, and what support mechanisms for overcoming these barriers exist for scientific research that includes Indigenous knowledge systems and communities? Based on survey assessment of current attitudes and practices regarding ethics in science research, additionally identifying areas where practitioners and scholars require additional capacity and resources for data stewardship practices. In fulfilling these objectives, this research serves to advance our understanding of historic barriers resulting in underrepresentation of Indigenous peoples and their knowledge systems in STEM, along with current and future opportunities for Indigenous scholars to address social, environmental, and economic issues as data stewards within their communities.This award reflects NSF's statutory mission and has been deemed worthy of support through evaluation using the Foundation's intellectual merit and broader impacts review criteria.