A Proposal to Provide Technical Assistance and Biology Network to Increase Competitiveness of HBCUs in the Research Coordination Networks in Undergraduate Biology Education Program

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The Quality Education for Minorities (QEM) Network is requesting one year of support from the National Science Foundation (NSF)'s Research Coordination Networks in Undergraduate Biology Education (RCN-UBE) Program to provide a workshop that will lead to increased awareness of the RCN-UBE program, enable the development of successful RCN-UBE network proposals, and ultimately lead to significant professional development of researchers and educators from Historically Black Colleges and Universities (HBCUs) nationwide. The main purpose of this work is to nurture HBCU researchers’ proposal development skills to cultivate a competitive pool of proposals to the RCN-UBE Program. To achieve this goal, QEM proposes to meet the following objectives: Conduct a two-day proposal development workshop in September of 2021 for 40 faculty who are interested in submitting successful RCN-UBE proposals in the 2022 awards cycle; Develop an RCN-UBE community of practice that will include a listserv and website that interfaces with social media, which will be used as an information sharing and collaboration network for HBCUs that are developing proposals; Provide additional guidance to participants through a series of post-workshop, consultant-led, individualized sessions to encourage participant submission of an RCN-UBE proposal by the January 2022 deadline; and Disseminate the results of workshop and post-workshop activities to the greater minority-serving community. Increasing RCN-UBE awards at MSIs will assist them with capacity building, developing and sustaining student enrolment and matriculation in the biological sciences, and diversify science, technology, engineering, and mathematics (STEM) careers contributing to America's global competitiveness. This project is being funded by the Directorate for Biological Sciences, Division of Biological Infrastructure as part of efforts to address the challenges posed in Vision and Change in Undergraduate Biology Education: A Call to Action (http://visionandchange/finalreport/).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.