Building Equitable University-Community Geoscience Research Collaborations on Chicago’s South Side

长期以来，地球科学一直在努力招聘和留住学生和专业人士，以反映其研究服务的多样化人群。虽然传统的招聘和留用办法近年来取得了重要进展，但该项目力求通过公开分享研究和教学实践中的资产和知识，建立新的框架，促进在芝加哥市内应用的地球科学部门和社区组织之间的平等互惠伙伴关系。这些透明的分享做法为基于地点的学习和研究开辟了道路，积极吸引主流地球科学之外的个人参与，投资于再生社区企业，并培训学生在可持续地球科学领域激励职业道路。这笔规划拨款将特别正式并加速伊利诺伊芝加哥大学(UIC)地球和环境科学系与城市种植者集体(UGC)之间的合作伙伴关系，UGC是一个由黑人和妇女领导的非营利性组织501(C)(3)。目标是制定一个可扩展的路线图，以解决阻碍伙伴关系发展的结构性和文化障碍。该项目的初始阶段将利用伊利诺伊芝加哥大学反种族主义校园转型伙伴关系(PACT)开发的方法，以确定如何最好地制定公平的预算、解决结构性障碍、协调各机构之间的战略计划、共同制定教学和研究计划以及确定新的劳动力路径。然后，该项目将试点教学和研究项目，使学生能够解决芝加哥城市土地管理、食品生产和废物回收利用方面的问题。在教学案例中，该部门的核心土壤课程将与该市城市农业场地网络的管理人员合作，为芝加哥南部被剥离投资和工业分区的地区的土壤更新开发可行的想法。在研究案例中，社区研究人员和大学调查人员将使用堆肥和UGC的新厌氧消化器设施来量化与城市食物垃圾回收相关的碳、营养和温室气体好处。该项目的这一方面将阐明基于升级和再生做法的劳动力发展途径。城市生长者集体的顾问将在项目的每个阶段进行正式的项目评估，目标是开发一个实施项目，纳入更多的社区团体，面临与支持这些伙伴关系相关的体制挑战，并与其他城市社区组织和地球科学部门共同开发可持续实施这些方法的途径。该奖项反映了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。

The geosciences have long struggled to recruit and retain students and professionals that reflect the diverse population its research serves. While traditional approaches to recruitment and retention have made important progress in recent years, this project seeks to build on new frameworks for equitable-reciprocal partnerships between geoscience departments and community-based organization applied within the city of Chicago through open sharing of assets and knowledge spanning both research and teaching practices. These transparent sharing practices open pathways for place-based learning and research, actively engage individuals outside the mainstream geosciences, invest in regenerative community enterprise and train students for inspiring career pathways in sustainable geoscience fields. This planning grant will specifically formalize and accelerate a partnership between the Earth and Environmental Sciences Department at University of Illinois Chicago (UIC) with the Urban Growers Collective (UGC), a Black and Women-led 501(c)(3) nonprofit. The goal is to develop a scalable roadmap to address structural and cultural barriers that hinder partnership growth. The initial phase of the project will utilize approaches developed by Partnerships for Antiracist Campus Transformation (PACT) at University of Illinois Chicago to establish how best to develop equitable budgets, redress structural barriers, align strategic plans between institutions, co-create teaching and research plans and identify new workforce pathways. The project will then pilot both teaching and research projects that empower students to solve problems on urban land stewardship, food production and waste upcycling in Chicago. For the teaching case, the department’s core soil class will work with stewards across the network of urban agriculture sites in the city to develop actionable ideas for soil renewal in disinvested and industrially zoned areas of Chicago’s southside. For the research case, the community researchers and university investigators will quantify carbon, nutrient, and greenhouse gas benefits associated with upcycling of urban food waste using composting and UGC’s new anaerobic digester facility. This aspect of the project will shed light on workforce development avenues based on upcycling and regenerative practices. A formal project assessment will be undertaken by consultants of the Urban Growers Collective during each phase of the project with the goal of developing an implementation project that incorporates a larger cohort of community groups, confronts institutional challenges associated with supporting these partnerships and developing a pathway for sustainable implementation of these approaches with other urban Community Based Organizations and geoscience departments.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.