Travel Awards for Students from Underrepresented Groups for the 2019 Cognitive Development Society (CDS) Meeting; Louisville, KY - October 2019

Cornell University, Ithaca NY

Investigators

Abstract

The Cognitive Development Society (CDS) was founded in 1999 with the goal of providing an intellectual gathering point for researchers who focus on the development of cognitive abilities. CDS members are united by a common focus on the developmental origins of perceiving, thinking and learning, and they are also united in the enterprise of bringing varied perspectives and approaches to bear on understanding these processes. Their research addresses developmental time points across the lifespan, and focuses on multi-level biological, behavioral, social and cultural processes shaping the development of cognitive abilities. Because bringing together diverse perspectives and approaches is fundamental to making progress in scientific understanding, CDS has sought to increase diversity in its membership. The CDS seeks to promote the attendance, at its 2019 meeting, of junior scholars (e.g., graduate students, post-docs) from groups traditionally underrepresented in the developmental sciences. At the conference, these scholars will present their research and participate in a mentoring program which involves pairing them with senior researchers in the field. The present award will increase the diversity of the CDS membership through several mechanisms. The first of these involves providing travel awards for junior scholars from underrepresented groups. The second involves continuing the society's mentoring program in which young scholars are paired with an established researcher. Through an organized meeting at the start of the conference with their mentors, mentees will have the opportunity to begin forging new professional relationships, thereby broadening their academic networks. Mentors will support their mentees by attending the junior scholars' presentations in order to provide support and feedback. The third involves facilitating networking events for junior scholars from this year's (2019) cohort and former recipients of the CDS Diversity Travel Awards from the 2015 and 2017 meetings. Together, these experiences are designed to promote the success of junior scholars from diverse backgrounds as both conference participants and as future independent investigators. Anonymous feedback from the junior scholars and their mentors following the 2019 meeting will help ensure that CDS can improve upon the effectiveness of its travel awards in achieving its goal of increasing the involvement of scholars traditionally underrepresented in the field. 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.