Conference: NSF INCLUDES: Gathering to Create Culturally Relevant Biomimicry Pathways to STEM for Indigenous Students

原住民学生和原住民的学习和认知方式在科学，技术，工程和数学（STEM）领域的代表性大大不足。为了应对这一挑战，我们建议亲自聚会，以获得跨学科和世界观的理解。这次拟议的聚会的目的是通过探索与文化相关的仿生途径，鼓励更多的土著学生进入STEM领域，进一步推动INCLUDES倡议的目标，使STEM企业更具包容性。我们认为这次会议是多年合作的第一阶段，旨在建立仿生学，传统生态知识（TEK）和土著社区之间的协同作用。土著学生在STEM的低入学率归因于STEM的西方科学的独家根源，很少承认土著的认识方式，沿着有限的课程联系到他们的生活经验。为了解决这种低代表性，我们假设仿生学，一个新兴的模仿自然创造可持续设计的STEM学科，可以吸引土著学生。仿生学承认多个科学根源，其中许多与土著人民的传统生态知识（TEK）共享，与自然有着深刻的尊重和关系。我们建议一个聚会，仿生学作为西方和土著知识之间的桥梁，提供了一条途径，以扩大学术理解什么是有效的科学，从而使更多的土著学生参与更广泛的STEM领域，变得更具包容性和整体性。这次聚会是基于一个知识共同生产的道德框架，该框架建立在与土著领导的规划委员会的互惠和关系基础上，并侧重于沙漠生态系统的地方知识。我们的目标是通过两只眼睛看--一种用一只眼睛通过土著透镜看世界而另一只眼睛通过西方透镜看世界的方法，创造一个更全面和包容性的愿景。这个项目是由NSF的埃迪伯尼采约翰逊包容全国社区的学习者代表性不足的发现者在工程和科学该奖项反映了NSF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。

Indigenous students and Native ways of learning and knowing are vastly underrepresented in Science, Technology, Engineering, and Math (STEM) fields. To address this challenge, we propose an in-person gathering to gain an understanding across disciplines and worldviews. The purpose of this proposed gathering is to further the INCLUDES Initiative goal of catalyzing the STEM enterprise to be more inclusive by exploring culturally relevant biomimicry pathways to encourage more Indigenous students into STEM fields. We see this gathering as phase one of a multi-year collaboration that builds synergies between biomimicry, Traditional Ecological Knowledge (TEK), and Indigenous communities. Low enrollment by Indigenous students in STEM is attributed to STEM’s exclusive roots in Western science with little acknowledgment of Indigenous ways of knowing, along with limited curricular linkages to their lived experiences. To address this low representation, we postulate that biomimicry, an emerging STEM discipline of emulating nature to create sustainable designs, could attract Indigenous students. Biomimicry recognizes multiple scientific roots, many shared with Traditional Ecological Knowledge (TEK) of Indigenous peoples, of having a deep respect and relationship with nature. We propose a gathering where biomimicry acts as a bridge between Western and Indigenous knowledges, providing a pathway to broaden academic understanding of what constitutes valid science, thus engaging more Indigenous students in a wider array of STEM fields and becoming more inclusive and holistic. The gathering is based on an ethical framework of knowledge co-production built on reciprocity and relationality with an Indigenous-led planning committee and a focus on place-based knowledge of a desert ecosystem. Our aim is to expand solutions to environmental problems and healing ecosystems through two-eyed seeing –an approach of viewing the world through an Indigenous lens with one eye while the other eye sees through a Western lens, creating a more holistic and inclusive vision.This project is funded by NSF’s Eddie Bernice Johnson Inclusion across the Nation of Communities of Learners of Underrepresented Discoverers in Engineering and Science (INCLUDES) Initiative, which seeks to motivate and accelerate collaborative infrastructure building to advance and sustain systemic change to broaden participation in STEM at scale.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.