NRT-IGE: Research to Innovation to Society

Oregon State University, Corvallis OR

Investigators

Abstract

The world's innovation landscape is changing. Innovation has become a fundamental prerequisite for sustainability that embraces not only the discovery of new ideas but also implementable research solutions to societal and market requirements. Addressing this shift requires STEM professionals who are simultaneously excellent researchers, capable innovators, and skilled leaders. This National Science Foundation Research Traineeship (NRT) award in the Innovations in Graduate Education (IGE) Track to Oregon State University will pilot and test a team-based, experiential curriculum that simultaneously integrates basic scientific research with market research and with professional skill development and practice. Learning outcome and evaluation data will be used to determine if this transformative curriculum develops researchers with the desired attributes to contribute to the national STEM agenda. If successful, the pilot will lay the foundation for institutionalization of this team-based, experiential approach as a new graduate STEM degree option that can be adopted at universities across the nation. The Research to Innovation to Society educational platform is built upon the Lens of the Market program and aims to train STEM graduate students across all disciplines as career resilient, innovative scientists and engineers. Academic and industrial scientists and engineers with demonstrated track records of STEM commercial and leadership success will partner with educational faculty to implement the curriculum. Two cohorts of interdisciplinary graduate student teams, supported by their faculty advisors, will expand their disciplinary research to explore implementable research solutions to societal and market requirements through an experiential learning process. Instruction will be delivered through multiple formats including face-to-face team interactions in a traditional classroom setting and online through videos, webinars and assignments; all materials are designed to be scalable and broadly accessible online. To support their project, teams will gather data from both primary and secondary sources, exposing them to experts in both business and academe. The curriculum is designed to develop networking, communication, data gathering and business analytic skills, as well as provide a broader societal context for the students' disciplinary research. Monthly presentations of findings by teams will culminate in a capstone presentation to faculty, administration, market leaders and innovation ecosystem leaders both online and face-to-face. Assessment and evaluation at multiple stages of the students' work by peers, instructors and market/business experts will form the basis for recommending adoption of this approach as a transformative alternative STEM graduate degree. The NSF Research Traineeship (NRT) Program is designed to encourage the development and implementation of bold, new, potentially transformative models for STEM graduate education training. The Innovations in Graduate Education Track is dedicated solely to piloting, testing, and evaluating novel, innovative, and potentially transformative approaches to graduate education.