This is funding to cover airfare and ground travel for approximately 40 student participants, as well as certain other expenses associated with, the 5th Young Investigators Summer Institute that is being organized by the PI under the auspices of the Consortium for the Science of Socio-Technical Systems (CSST), and which will be held July 29-August, 2012, at Bishop's Lodge in Santa Fe, New Mexico. The CSST resulted from recognition of the growing importance of research on the interplay of humans and technology. The science of socio-technical systems (SST) is fundamental to the rapidly growing "virtual organizations" thematic area, among others, thus the urgent national need for research that is firmly grounded in the SST tradition. Yet this community of scholars, which includes faculty in diverse fields such as social informatics, social computing, CSCW, computational social science, HCI, and information science, remains fractured and largely invisible.
The CSST series of Summer Institutes is a critical step toward unifying this diverse community and enhancing its visibility, by providing an immersive experience for the next generation of SST leaders (both advanced doctoral students and pre-tenure faculty) so that they will be well prepared to engage in distributed scientific inquiry. The Summer Institutes build critical intellectual and social capital by fostering creation of a cohort group of new researchers whose work is shaped by hearing experts in socio-technical systems research provide encouragement and give advice on how to advance the field's intellectual basis, methodological approaches, and potential for sustained, meaningful and even transformative impact.
The 2012 workshop will adhere to the successful format that has evolved and been refined over the course of the prior Summer Institutes. The workshop will bring together early career researchers selected through a competitive review process with a set of more senior researchers for an intensive five-day research exchange. The event will be residential and located in a semi-isolated locale to encourage the maximum amount of social interaction among participants. Senior faculty, junior faculty, and advanced doctoral students will collectively strive to articulate in more coherent and contemporary forms the basic principles, goals and approaches to doing socio-technical science across a range of relevant intellectual communities. They will explore topics and methods for advancing the science of socio-technical systems, while focusing on intellectual development of individual research that is aligned with core aspects of the socio-technical perspective.
Broader Impacts: The diversity of Summer Institute participants across a number of dimensions (e.g., institutional, disciplinary, geographic, gender, minority group status), serves to broaden participants' perspectives at a critical stage in their careers. The immersive intellectual experience during the workshop will facilitate creation of a social network among the participants and the senior researchers who serve as instructors for the Summer Institute. This network will play a major role both in the professional development of the participants and in the evolution of the field of socio-technical systems research.
Funding afforded the means to continue offering the Young Investigators Summer Institute on the Science of Socio-Technical Systems (CSST) for 2012. And, because of careful budgeting and lower-than expected expenses, a small amount of this was carried forward via a no-cost extension to provide additional support for CSST 2013. The CSST 2012 (and 2013) Summer Institutes built on and extended the successes from previous institute in pursuit of four goals: (1) making visible the large and distributed intellectual community of scholars interested in pursuing and advancing socio-technical research, (2) encouraging young scholars to more aggressively and explicitly pursue socio-technical scholarship – and particularly forms of socio-technical scholarship that will have direct benefit to society and substantial intellectual contribution (as we expand on below) and (3) advancing and articulating in more coherent and contemporary forms the basic principles, goals and approaches to doing socio-technical science across a range of relevant intellectual communities. The 2012 and 2013 CSST Summer institutes brought together 30 senior scholars and 50 young investigators – primarily doctoral students – from an applicant pool of more than 300. These people come from intellectual communities such as human-computer interaction (HCI), computer-supported cooperative work (CSCW), social computing, information science and social informatics; the sociology of work and organizations, organizational studies, information systems, science and technology studies, communication, ICT for development, medical informatics and others. Both CSST 2012 and CSST 2013 were held across five days (in early July, 2012 and latter July 2013). The 2012 Summer Institute was directed by Dr. Andrea Tapia (Penn State) and Dr. Brian Butler (UMd College Park). Dr. Tapia served as assistant director to Wayne Lutters (UMBC) for the 2011 Summer Institute. Both Dr. Butler and Dr. Tapia have participated in other Summer Institutes and have voluntarily taken on informal leadership roles in the CSST community. The 2013 Summer Institute was directed by Dr. Brian Butler (UMd College Park) and Dr. Susan Winter (also of UMd). Dr. Butler served as assistant director to Dr. Tapia for the 2011 Summer Institute. Both Dr. Butler and Dr. Tapia have participated in other Summer Institutes and have voluntarily taken on informal leadership roles in the CSST community. In addition, Dr. Steve Sawyer (Syracuse) served as principal investigator for the grant and worked closely with Dr’s Butler, Tapia and Winter. Broader Impact: The 2012 and 2103 CSSST brought together the best of the next generation of socio-technical system researchers. This enabled the informal social networks of relations, commitments and interests both among themselves and with several senior researchers. This will play a major role in these young scholar’s professional development and in the evolution of the field of socio-technical systems research. The diversity of Institute participants (e.g., institutional, intellectual, geographic, demographic) broadened participant’s perspectives at a critical stage in their careers. And, many of these participants have gone on to help organize CSST related activities. Intellectual Merit: The focus of the 2012 and 2013 CSSTS has been to advancing participants’ research programs (e.g., dissertation for doctoral students) to leverage, expand and advance sociotechnical approaches to some of nation’s (and the worlds) problems regarding the design, development, deployment, uses and effects of digital technologies. The CSST Summer Institutes have provided both an opportunity for these programs to be shaped through intellectual exchange with experienced researchers as well as enhanced collaboration with other young researchers. In addition, these Institutes are mechanisms for encouraging socio-technical systems impacts within the US and around the world. The basis of the CSST and the interest in advancing sociotechnical research on ICT is grounded in its potential to generate transformational research. Certainly work in this tradition has been influential far beyond its level of funding and emphasis. The NSF has been pro-active in sustaining socio-technical research into the design, development, deployment and uses of ICT because there is both a history of, and potential for, transformational insights to be gained from this type of integrative science.
