NSF INCLUDES Alliance: Broadening Career Pathways in Food, Energy, and Water Systems with and within Native American Communities (Native FEWS Alliance)

University Of California-Berkeley, Berkeley CA

Investigators

Abstract

The Native FEWS (Food, Energy, Water Systems) Alliance is focused on innovative research and community partnerships linking two interconnected challenges: a crisis in access to food, energy, and water in rural communities across the United States and limited educational and career pathways available to address these needs. The University of California at Berkeley, University of Arizona and American Indian Higher Education Consortium work with over 20 partners to form the Native FEWS Alliance, which is cultivating a highly skilled STEM workforce that can address FEWS challenges in rural communities and co-innovate place-based education and community partnerships. The Alliance develops curricula and mentoring guides, offers workshops, adapts and adopts best practices, and shares results. These activities enable institutions across the country to access Native FEWS educational and mentoring materials. Integrating approaches to teaching and applied research with traditional and place-based knowledges, the Alliance is working to transform Native FEWS education. The Alliance brings together the resources, expertise, and experiences of multiple educational institutions and partners to form a Networked Improvement Community that addresses urgent FEWS challenges and transforms educational approaches to addressing them. The implementation plan is designed to produce more successful recruitment, matriculation, retention, and degree attainment outcomes. Alliance initiatives are rigorously evaluated and disseminated, contributing new knowledge to the research base of effective practices in recruiting, teaching, and mentoring, and in building ethical, effective co-designed partnerships. Dissemination methods include publications, case studies, curricula, guidebooks, webinars, podcasts and multimedia resources. This project is funded by the NSF INCLUDES initiative, which aims to enhance U.S. leadership in discoveries and innovations by addressing challenges to participation in STEM at scale. The Alliance is co-funded by the Directorate for Biological Sciences, Division of Biological Infrastructure and the Division of Environmental Biology. 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.