EAGER Germination: Crystallizing Transformative Ideas by Seeding a Diverse Knowledge Community

University Of Illinois At Urbana-Champaign, Urbana IL

Investigators

Abstract

This proposal from the University of Illinois aims to develop a learning framework and associated platforms that will increase the probability of germinating transformative research ideas that will open new opportunities to address important societal challenges. Although the framework is designed for any research domain, for evaluation purposes this project focuses on the interdisciplinary challenge of resilience to global climate change. The target audiences are late stage graduate students, early stage faculty, and postdoctoral scholars who show potential for engaging in cross-institutional interdisciplinary research linking scholars from American Indian Tribal Colleges, Historically Black Colleges and Universities, Hispanic-Serving Colleges and Universities, and Land Grant Universities. Resilience to climate change is a fundamentally important issue and this project has the opportunity to generate new approaches to this challenge. The inclusion of minority serving institutions in a meaningful way that gives them true voice breaks new ground in this area of inquiry as well. Procedures that facilitate including multiple voices when addressing fundamental scientific challenges will be a contribution to building a commonwealth among the many groups in the US who have stakes in important scientific issues. Expected project outcomes will be: (1) Cross-institutional, interdisciplinary proposals to funding agencies; (2) Sustainable cross-institutional and interdisciplinary networks to promote future research; (3) A procedure for facilitating the first two outcomes and evidence for its efficacy, scalability, and adaptability beyond the institutions involved in the study. A team composed of research and STEM directors and other personnel from the American Indian Higher Education Council (AIHEC), the Hispanic Association of Colleges and Universities (HACU), and the National Association for Equal Opportunity in Higher Education (NAFEO), and directors and research scientists from the National Center for Supercomputing Applications (NCSA), as well as other scholars and process experts will contribute to the development and implementation of the framework.