UMEB: Recruiting Native Americans into Environmental Science

这个项目涉及堪萨斯州三所大学之间的合作，将培训一些与生态和环境科学有关的研究技术的美国原住民本科生。与许多只提供短暂研究经验的项目不同，这个项目将在2-4年的时间里与学生合作，指导他们完成毕业并获得学士学位。在过去的7年里，这个项目的PI已经让超过25名美洲原住民毕业，这些毕业生中的大多数都可以进入研究生院。这个奖项包括美国国家科学基金会国际科学与工程办公室中东欧项目的一项补充，用于资助学生和导师前往西伯利亚进行土著知识研究，这是与戈尔诺-阿尔泰斯克州立大学的科学家和学生合作的一部分。该项目的意义在于最近的发现，土著社区代表着通过西方科学传统方法获得的知识的宝库，这些知识既是对西方科学传统的补充，也是对获得的科学知识的补充。例如，本土知识1)揭示了在西方科学范式下被单独研究并保持不相关联的生态群落之间的联系，以及2)洞察高素质个体在被西方种群水平思维传统所掩盖的种群动态中的作用。完成这一项目的学生将比其他任何群体更好地准备在本土知识的背景下进行科学研究。这样的方法可以同时提高科学意识，而不会忽视人类经验的精神层面。

0203404PierottiThis project involves collaboration between three universities in Kansasand will train a number of Native American undergraduates in researchtechniques related to ecology and environmental science. Unlike manyprograms that offer only a brief research experience, this program will workwith students over a 2-4 year period and mentor them through to graduationwith a bachelor's degree. The PIs on this program have graduated more than25 Native Americans over the last 7 years, and most of these graduates havegone on to attend graduate school.This award includes a supplement from the Central and Eastern Europe Program of NSF's Office of International Science and Engineering to fund student and mentor travel to Siberia for research on indigenous knowledge as part of a collaboration with scientists and students at Gorno-Altaisk State University.The significance of this program lies in recent discoveries that Indigenouscommunities represent stores of knowledge that both add to and complimentscientific knowledge obtained through the methods of the Western scientifictradition, e.g. indigenous knowledge 1) reveals connections betweenecological communities that are studied separately and remain unlinkedunder Western scientific paradigms, and 2) give insight into the role ofhigh quality individuals within population dynamics that are obscured byWestern traditions of population level thinking. Students completing thisprogram will be better prepared to conduct scientific research within thecontext of indigenous knowledge than any other group. Such approaches cansimultaneously increase scientific awareness without losing sight ofspiritual dimensions of human experience.