FIRED UP: An immersive early field experience program to build community, support inclusivity, and foster large-scale research ideas

FIRED UP：一项沉浸式早期现场体验计划，旨在建立社区、支持包容性并培育大规模研究想法

• 批准号: 2105635
• 负责人: Valerie McKenzie
• 金额: $ 50万
• 依托单位: University of Colorado at Boulder
• 依托单位国家: 美国
• 项目类别: Standard Grant
• 财政年份: 2021
• 资助国家: 美国
• 起止时间: 2021-06-15 至 2025-05-31
• 项目状态: 未结题
• 来源: https://www.nsf.gov/awardsearch/showAward?AWD_ID=2105635&HistoricalAwards=false
• 关键词: FIRED; UP; immersive; early; field

This National Science Foundation Innovations in Graduate Education (IGE) award to the University of Colorado Boulder will test the efficacy of a first-year graduate student program designed to promote the inclusion of students from diverse identities as well as provide discipline-specific training in field methods. Currently, Ecology and Evolutionary Biology graduate programs in the US lag behind other biological disciplines in the representation of PEER students (persons excluded due to ethnicity and race). This project aims to address this issue by piloting a program that aims to increase PEER recruitment, create a cohort community, improve the sense of belonging among students, increase early access to expert field methods training, and expand training to address ecological questions relevant to global environmental change. Challenging issues related to environmental change, such as biodiversity loss and climate change, require a diverse workforce of highly trained biologists who can collaborate across disciplines and produce solution-oriented scientific approaches. While our program is tailored to the disciplines of ecology and evolution, the basic elements of the program could be adapted to many STEM disciplines and broaden the impact of this approach.The PIs of this project will work to increase PEER graduate student recruitment efforts through connection with multiple conferences and networks that promote student diversity. The design of the graduate education model draws on theories of human motivation and personality (self-determination theory and sources of self-efficacy) to target psychological needs that, when satisfied, foster well-being and success in graduate school: autonomy, competence, and relatedness. By providing an early immersive field experience for a cohort of students the summer before they begin graduate school, our program will work to remove the barriers that fieldwork poses to PEER students interested in ecology while providing critical early-training and cohort building to increase retention and students’ success. The project will take advantage of the well-established Niwot Ridge Long-Term Ecological Research (NWT LTER) program and the Mountain Research Station at CU Boulder. Evaluation of the program will focus on understanding how programmatic components support students in developing competence in the field and analytical methods, autonomy and independence as researchers, and a sense of belonging within the field. The project aims to publish and disseminate the approaches used to be accessible for a variety of STEM fields in addition to the discipline-specific results in ecological science.The Innovations in Graduate Education (IGE) program is focused on research in graduate education. The goals of IGE are to pilot, test and validate innovative approaches to graduate education and to generate the knowledge required to move these approaches into the broader community.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.

这项授予科罗拉多大学博尔德分校的国家科学基金会研究生教育创新（IGE）奖将测试一年级研究生项目的有效性，该项目旨在促进来自不同身份的学生的融合，并提供特定学科的实地方法培训。目前，美国的生态学和进化生物学研究生课程在PEER学生（由于种族和种族而被排除在外的人）的代表性方面落后于其他生物学科。本项目旨在通过试点项目来解决这一问题，该项目旨在增加PEER的招募，创建群组社区，提高学生的归属感，增加早期获得专家实地方法培训的机会，并扩大培训范围，以解决与全球环境变化相关的生态问题。与环境变化相关的具有挑战性的问题，如生物多样性丧失和气候变化，需要一支由训练有素的生物学家组成的多元化劳动力队伍，他们可以跨学科合作，并提出以解决方案为导向的科学方法。虽然我们的计划是为生态学和进化学科量身定制的，但该计划的基本要素可以适应许多STEM学科，并扩大这种方法的影响。该项目的pi将通过与促进学生多样性的多个会议和网络的联系，努力增加PEER研究生招聘工作。研究生教育模式的设计借鉴了人类动机和人格理论（自决理论和自我效能的来源），以心理需求为目标，当这些需求得到满足时，会促进研究生院的幸福和成功：自主性、能力和相关性。通过在研究生入学前的夏天为一群学生提供早期沉浸式的实地体验，我们的项目将努力消除实地考察对对生态学感兴趣的PEER学生构成的障碍，同时提供关键的早期培训和群体建设，以提高学生的保留率和成功。该项目将利用完善的Niwot Ridge长期生态研究（NWT LTER）计划和科罗拉多大学博尔德分校的山地研究站。对课程的评估将侧重于了解课程的组成部分如何支持学生发展在该领域的能力和分析方法，作为研究人员的自主性和独立性，以及在该领域的归属感。该项目旨在出版和传播用于各种STEM领域的方法，以及生态科学中特定学科的结果。研究生教育创新（IGE）项目专注于研究生教育的研究。IGE的目标是试点、测试和验证研究生教育的创新方法，并产生将这些方法推广到更广泛的社区所需的知识。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。