RCN-UBE: Inclusive Environments and Metrics in Biology Education and Research (iEMBER): Novel Networking Fostering Interdisciplinary Communities and New Research Collaborations

RCN-UBE：生物教育和研究中的包容性环境和指标（iEMBER）网络旨在提高STEM领域学生的包容性和保留率。增加多样性和留住学生的障碍是多方面的，学术、文化、经济、课程、情感和社会因素都是造成学生流失的原因，尤其是在那些来自代表性不足群体的学生中。因此，试图解决这些问题的研究必须结合多个领域的知识。为此，iEMBER网络旨在创建一个框架，为来自生物学、教育和社会科学等不同领域的研究人员提供合作的机会。这将通过网络研讨会、会议、开发社区资源和在线协作平台来实现。作为他们工作的一部分，该网络的研究团队将检查教育环境，以确定它们如何影响包容和保留。该网络的目标包括创建一个强大的实践社区和研究创新中心，并寻找与我们共同愿景的合作伙伴，以扩大多样化和有效的STEM环境的影响范围。该项目的智力优势在于：1)采用新颖的创业网络策略来促进新的跨学科研究合作；2)让研究人员参加其专业领域以外的会议，从而促进跨学科研究；3)开发一个在线平台，支持正在进行的合作，促进新的合作，并作为关于STEM包容性和多样性的教学、理论和实践资源的储存库。网络成员将利用这些资源围绕STEM包容性问题开发新的知识、理论和实践，如果没有这些资源，这些知识、理论和实践是不可能实现的。此外，iEMBER将促进新一代研究人员的培训，这些研究人员拥有继续解决STEM教育问题所需的广泛专业知识。该项目的共同资助由改善本科STEM教育（IUSE: EHR）计划提供，以表彰该项目与IUSE: EHR计划的总体目标一致。该奖项反映了美国国家科学基金会的法定使命，并通过使用基金会的知识价值和更广泛的影响审查标准进行评估，被认为值得支持。

The RCN-UBE: Inclusive Environments and Metrics in Biology Education and Research (iEMBER) Network aims to improve the inclusion and retention of students in STEM fields. Barriers to increasing diversity and retention are multifactorial, with academic, cultural, economic, curricular, affective, and social forces contributing to student attrition, particularly among those from underrepresented groups. Thus, it is imperative that research attempting to address these issues incorporates knowledge from multiple fields. To that end, the iEMBER Network aims to create a framework that will provide opportunities for researchers from different fields including biology, education, and the social sciences to work together. This will be done through networking workshops, conferences, and the development of community resources and an online collaboration platform. As a part of their work, the network's research teams will examine educational environments to determine how they impact inclusion and retention. The goals of the network include creating a robust community of practice and hubs of research innovation and finding partners who share our vision of expanding the reach of diverse and effective STEM environments. The intellectual merits of the project lie in 1) employing a novel startup pitch networking strategy to foster new cross-disciplinary research collaborations; 2) having researchers attend conferences outside of their areas of expertise, thus promoting cross-disciplinary research; 3) developing an online platform that supports ongoing collaborations, fosters new ones, and functions as a reservoir of pedagogical, theoretical, and practical resources on inclusion and diversity in STEM. Members of the network will use these resources to develop new knowledge, theories, and practices around issues of inclusion in STEM that would not have been possible without them. Furthermore, iEMBER will promote the training of a new generation of researchers that has the broad expertise needed to continue to tackle problems in STEM Education.Co-funding for this project is being provided by the Improving Undergraduate STEM Education (IUSE: EHR) program in recognition of the project's alignment with the overarching goals of the IUSE: EHR program.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.