EAGER Germination: Project Confluence: Engineering and Science to Address Community Needs

美国各地的许多社区都面临着持续的环境和能源挑战，特别是那些少数族裔或社会经济上处于不利地位的人比例很高的社区。社区团体获得工程和科学专业知识的机会可能有限，这些专业知识可以帮助他们努力应对这些挑战。授予亚利桑那州立大学的这一奖项将资助一系列综合努力，以建设工程和科学学术研究人员的技能、资源和知识，使他们能够进行研发(R&A；D)，以支持服务不足的社区。这项研究的一个关键目标是测试与社区团体的合作是否提高了学者提出具有社会影响力的研究问题的能力。重要的是，服务不足的社区将通过让学术研究人员与他们合作，为他们的社区确定和解决关键问题而受益。该项目将创建方法和资源，以确定研究需求为目标，在工程师和科学家与服务不足的社区之间建立互动。将编写关于与社区团体进行有效协作的入门读物和资源，并将其纳入一个在线知识分享和协作平台。同时，将开展学术研究人员和社区团体参与的协作技术和科学需求评估(CNA)。重要的是，这些CNA的结构旨在强调社区资产，避免简单地关注社区中的问题或缺陷。CNA预计将导致创建研发路线图，以解决服务不足的社区面临的重要环境和能源挑战，并可用于后续的合作工作。一个重要的必然目标将是确定这一过程是否影响学术研究人员萌发应对重大社会挑战的变革性研究想法的能力。研究人员在这个问题上的自我效能感将通过CNA之前和之后的调查进行评估，这些调查使用工程专业责任评估(EPRA)的修订版本，扩展到包括科学家的工作。此外，问题形成能力和问题价值的经验测试将侧重于分析对与社区群体需求相关的原型研发路线图的反应。这项研究的积极成果将为在国家层面上进行推广奠定基础，特别是考虑到计划建立一个在线资源交流平台。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。

Many communities across the US face persistent environmental and energy challenges, particularly those who have high proportions of minority or socioeconomically disadvantaged individuals. Community groups may have limited access to engineering and scientific expertise that could help their efforts to address these challenges. This award to Arizona State University will fund an integrated set of efforts to build the skills, resources, and knowledge of engineering and science academic researchers to enable them to conduct research and development (R&D) in support of underserved communities. A key goal of the research is to test whether collaboration with community groups increases the ability of academics to formulate societally impactful research questions. Importantly, underserved communities stand to derive benefit through having academic researchers work with them to identify and address critical questions for their communities.This project will create approaches and resources for establishing interactions between engineers and scientists and underserved communities with the goal of identifying research needs. Primers and resources on effective collaboration with community groups will be developed and incorporated into an online knowledge-sharing and collaboration platform. In parallel, collaborative technological and scientific needs assessments (CNAs) will be conducted involving both academic researchers and community groups. Importantly, the structure of these CNAs is designed to emphasize community assets and avoid simply focusing on problems or deficits in the community. The CNAs are anticipated to lead to the creation of R&D roadmaps which address important environmental and energy challenges faced by underserved communities, and which can be leveraged for subsequent collaborative work. An important corollary goal will be to determine whether this process impacts the ability of academic researchers to germinate transformative research ideas that address important societal challenges. Self-efficacy of researchers with respect to this question will be assessed through pre- and post-CNA surveys that use a modified version of the Engineering Professional Responsibility Assessment (EPRA) expanded to include the work of scientists. Additionally, empirical testing of question formulation capacity and question value will focus on analysis of responses to a prototype R&D road-map related to community group needs. Positive outcomes in this study would lay the foundation for scaling on a national level, particularly given the planned establishment of an online platform for communicating resources.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.