Conference: Creating Capacity and Connections to Expand Research Support Across the Northern Plains

该项目的目标是通过召集研究支持专业人员召开面对面会议，在五个州的北部平原地区(达科他州、内布拉斯加州、蒙大拿州和怀俄明州)建立研究支持能力，重点是加强该地区研究企业的实践、流程和劳动力。与项目领导团队一样，项目参与者将代表不同角色和类型的高等教育机构，包括研究密集型、新兴研究、主要是本科生和部落学院和大学。将参与该项目的机构和研究支持人员致力于促进区域转型，以克服工作人员招聘、繁重的工作量和获得专业发展机会的挑战。北部平原会议将为与会者创造空间，以制定共同的愿景，考虑应对共同挑战的可能战略，确定如何效仿或分享优势，并将提供机会，为未来的合作制定路线，包括将思维方式从服务于个人机构需求转变为支持地区研究企业。该项目的影响将通过加强合作和资源共享来实现，这将促进北部平原研究支持专业人员之间的联系和指导。这将反过来促进机构和教师之间的关系建设，并增加整个地区的合作研究活动。这一奖项反映了NSF的法定使命，并通过使用基金会的智力优势和更广泛的影响审查标准进行评估，被认为值得支持。

This goal of this project is to build research support capacity across the five-state Northern Plains region (Dakotas, Nebraska, Montana, and Wyoming) by bringing together research support professionals for an in-person convening focused on enhancing the practices, processes, and workforce of the region’s research enterprise. Like the project leadership team, project participants will represent diverse roles and types of institutions of higher education, including research-intensive, emerging research, primarily undergraduate, and tribal colleges and universities. The institutions and research support personnel who will participate in this project are committed to catalyzing regional transformation to overcome the challenges of staff recruitment, heavy workloads, and access to professional development opportunities. The Northern Plains convening will create space for participants to develop a shared vision, consider possible strategies to address common challenges, identify how strengths can be emulated or shared, and will provide the opportunity to chart a course for future collaboration that includes shifting mindsets away from serving individual institutional needs to supporting the regional research enterprise. The impact of the project will be realized through increased cooperation and resource sharing that will foster connection and mentorship between Northern Plains research support professionals. This will, in turn, promote relationship building between institutions and faculty and increase collaborative research activity across the region.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.