Capacity Building for Research at Minority Serving Institutions (CyBR-MSI)

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This award is funded in whole or in part under the American Rescue Plan Act of 2021 (Public Law 117-2).Minority-Serving Institutions (MSIs) serve a high proportion of students from underrepresented minority groups, increasing workforce readiness and contributing to increased representation of these underserved groups in post-baccalaureate pathways. However, only a small fraction of federal funding for science and engineering research provided to institutions of higher education is distributed to MSIs. Addressing this need, the American Society for Engineering Education (ASEE) will conduct a program to increase the participation and competitiveness of Minority-Serving Institutions (MSIs) for NSF’s Computer and Information Science and Engineering (CISE) core programs (e.g., research funding in artificial intelligence, cyber-physical systems, and cybersecurity). The Capacity Building for Research at Minority-Serving Institutions (CyBR-MSI) program uses a constructivist theoretical framework and builds on the lessons learned from a pilot proposal development workshop held in early 2021.The purpose of the CyBR-MSI program is threefold: to (1) help participants identify and co-create research ideas for NSF CISE core programs; (2) form and develop teams among researchers from MSIs; and (3) establish the groundwork for strong grant proposals. The program includes: (1) a three-day Networking, Ideation & Team-building Workshop (NITW) in which researchers will form teams and collectively develop teamwork competencies; (2) a five-week Proposal Development Workshop (PDW) that will provide research teams with instruction, writing labs, and expert feedback on the development of key proposal components; (3) a Mentoring Program (MP) that will give each research team experienced coaching; and (4) a Mini-Grant Program (MGP) that will offer seed funding for research projects. These components will provide robust scaffolding to MSI researchers to develop competencies of team performance and proposal competitiveness through facilitated ideation, team building, instruction, practice, review, and mentoring.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.