Collaborative Research: Supporting Leadership in Diversity, Professional Development, and Geoscience Capacity Building for Veterans in STEM: The VRC-CDLS Veterans in STEM Program

该项目旨在维持东洛杉矶学院(ELAC)和加州大学洛杉矶分校(UCLA)之间的跨机构地球/环境科学多样性领导计划，该计划从退伍军人社区招募人才。老兵社区是由那些通过他们的服务接触到领导力驱动的背景的人组成的，这些背景往往会发展出独特的技能、经验和心态。这使得退伍军人成为地球/环境科学界多样性冠军的首选人选。但与地球科学、环境科学和STEM社区中许多代表性不足的社区一样，退伍军人面临着额外的障碍，必须加以解决，以促进他们作为多样性领导者的发展。通过制定一项从这些障碍中招聘并同时解决这些障碍的计划，个人投资机构计划创造独特的经验，以培养退伍军人社区中的多样性倡导者，并创建教师领导层对退伍军人社区的同理心，以更好地告知他们如何扩大努力以增强包容性。许多退伍军人来自投资不足的社区；因此，个人投资者将专注于从这些社区招聘人员，这将有助于扩大对地学的参与努力。私人投资机构希望创建一个数据支持的模式计划，可用于各种机构，为更大规模的退伍军人纳入和领导力发展工作提供信息，可以直接和有效地解决“支持退伍军人STEM职业法案”。PIS正在寻求采用多维方法，同时解决社会、个人和学术问题；加强老兵对地球/环境科学研究社区的参与；进一步发展成为这些领域有效领导者的基本技能；并创建可用于解决各种类型机构的老兵包容和领导力发展的模式。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 project aims to sustain a cross-institutional geo/environmental science diversity leadership program, between East Los Angeles College (ELAC) and The University of California, Los Angeles (UCLA), which recruits from the veteran community. The veteran community is comprised of people who, through their service, have been exposed to a leadership-driven background which often develops unique skills, experiences, and mindsets. This makes veterans prime candidates to serve as diversity champions in the geo/environmental science communities. But as with many underrepresented communities in the geoscience, environmental science, and the STEM community overall, veterans face additional barriers which must be addressed to facilitate their development as diversity leaders. By developing a plan to recruit from and simultaneously address these barriers the PIs plan to create unique experiences to develop champions of diversity in veteran communities and create faculty leadership empathy towards the veteran community to better inform them how to create expansion efforts to enhance inclusion.Many veterans are from under-invested communities; therefore, the PIs will focus efforts on recruitment from these communities, which will contribute to broadening participation efforts in the geosciences. The PIs desire to create a data-backed model program that can be used at various institutions to inform larger veteran inclusion and leadership development efforts that can directly, and effectively address the “Supporting Veterans in STEM Careers Act”. The PIs are looking to employ a multi-dimensional approach that will simultaneously address social, personal, and academic issues; strengthen veteran involvement in the geo/environmental science research communities; further develop essential skills to become effective leaders in these fields; and create a model that can be used to address veteran inclusion and leadership development at various types of institutions.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.