FIRED UP: An immersive early field experience program to build community, support inclusivity, and foster large-scale research ideas

这项授予科罗拉多博尔德大学的国家科学基金会研究生教育创新(IGE)奖将测试一年级研究生项目的有效性，该项目旨在促进不同身份的学生的融合，并提供现场方法方面的学科特定培训。目前，美国的生态学和进化生物学研究生课程在同伴学生(因种族和种族而被排除在外的人)的代表性方面落后于其他生物学学科。该项目旨在通过试行一项计划来解决这一问题，该计划旨在增加同行招聘，创建队列社区，提高学生的归属感，增加早期获得专家领域方法培训的机会，并扩大培训，以解决与全球环境变化相关的生态问题。与环境变化相关的具有挑战性的问题，如生物多样性丧失和气候变化，需要训练有素的生物学家的多样化队伍，他们能够跨学科合作，产生面向解决方案的科学方法。虽然我们的计划是为生态学和进化论学科量身定做的，但该计划的基本要素可以适应许多STEM学科，并扩大这种方法的影响。该项目的PI将通过与促进学生多样性的多个会议和网络相联系，努力增加同行研究生的招生努力。研究生教育模式的设计借鉴了人类动机和人格理论(自我决定理论和自我效能感的来源)，以满足心理需求为目标，这些需求在研究生院培养幸福和成功：自主性、能力和关联性。通过在研究生入学前的暑假为一群学生提供早期身临其境的实地体验，我们的项目将致力于消除实地考察对生态感兴趣的同龄人构成的障碍，同时提供关键的早期培训和队伍建设，以提高留住学生和学生的成功。该项目将利用久负盛名的尼沃特岭长期生态研究(NWT LTER)计划和位于CU Boulder的山地研究站。对该计划的评估将侧重于了解方案部分如何支持学生发展该领域的能力和分析方法，作为研究人员的自主性和独立性，以及对该领域的归属感。该项目旨在出版和传播各种STEM领域使用的方法，以及在生态科学方面的特定学科成果。研究生教育创新(IGE)计划专注于研究生教育研究。IGE的目标是试验、测试和验证研究生教育的创新方法，并产生将这些方法推广到更广泛社区所需的知识。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。

This National Science Foundation Innovations in Graduate Education (IGE) award to the University of Colorado Boulder will test the efficacy of a first-year graduate student program designed to promote the inclusion of students from diverse identities as well as provide discipline-specific training in field methods. Currently, Ecology and Evolutionary Biology graduate programs in the US lag behind other biological disciplines in the representation of PEER students (persons excluded due to ethnicity and race). This project aims to address this issue by piloting a program that aims to increase PEER recruitment, create a cohort community, improve the sense of belonging among students, increase early access to expert field methods training, and expand training to address ecological questions relevant to global environmental change. Challenging issues related to environmental change, such as biodiversity loss and climate change, require a diverse workforce of highly trained biologists who can collaborate across disciplines and produce solution-oriented scientific approaches. While our program is tailored to the disciplines of ecology and evolution, the basic elements of the program could be adapted to many STEM disciplines and broaden the impact of this approach.The PIs of this project will work to increase PEER graduate student recruitment efforts through connection with multiple conferences and networks that promote student diversity. The design of the graduate education model draws on theories of human motivation and personality (self-determination theory and sources of self-efficacy) to target psychological needs that, when satisfied, foster well-being and success in graduate school: autonomy, competence, and relatedness. By providing an early immersive field experience for a cohort of students the summer before they begin graduate school, our program will work to remove the barriers that fieldwork poses to PEER students interested in ecology while providing critical early-training and cohort building to increase retention and students’ success. The project will take advantage of the well-established Niwot Ridge Long-Term Ecological Research (NWT LTER) program and the Mountain Research Station at CU Boulder. Evaluation of the program will focus on understanding how programmatic components support students in developing competence in the field and analytical methods, autonomy and independence as researchers, and a sense of belonging within the field. The project aims to publish and disseminate the approaches used to be accessible for a variety of STEM fields in addition to the discipline-specific results in ecological science.The Innovations in Graduate Education (IGE) program is focused on research in graduate education. The goals of IGE are to pilot, test and validate innovative approaches to graduate education and to generate the knowledge required to move these approaches into the broader community.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.