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募和留住学生和专业人士，以反映其研究所服务的多样化人口。近年来，传统的招聘和保留方法取得了重要进展，该项目力求通过开放共享研究和教学实践中的资产和知识，在芝加哥市内应用地球科学部门和社区组织之间建立公平互惠的伙伴关系新框架。这些透明的共享实践为基于地方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，投资于再生社区企业，并培养学生在可持续地球科学领域的职业道路。这项规划拨款将专门正式化并加速伊利诺伊大学芝加哥（UIC）地球与环境科学系与黑人和妇女领导的501（c）（3）非营利组织城市种植者集体（UGC）之间的伙伴关系。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和文化障碍。 该项目的初始阶段将利用伊利诺伊大学芝加哥反种族主义校园改造伙伴关系制定的方法，以确定如何最好地制定公平的预算，纠正结构性障碍，调整机构之间的战略计划，共同制定教学和研究计划，并确定新的劳动力途径。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的城市土地管理，食品生产和废物回收利用问题。对于教学案例，该部门的核心土壤类将与整个城市的城市农业网站网络的管家工作，以制定可操作的想法，土壤更新的投资和工业区的芝加哥的南部地区。 对于研究案例，社区研究人员和大学研究人员将量化与使用堆肥和UGC新的厌氧消化设施的城市食物垃圾升级循环相关的碳，营养和温室气体效益。 该项目的这一方面将揭示基于升级循环和再生实践的劳动力发展途径。 在项目的每个阶段，城市种植者集体的顾问将进行正式的项目评估，目的是制定一个纳入更多社区团体的执行项目，面对与支持这些伙伴关系和与其他城市社区组织和地球科学部门开发可持续实施这些方法的途径相关的制度挑战。NSF的法定使命，并已被认为是值得通过使用基金会的知识价值和更广泛的影响审查标准进行评估的支持。

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.