The purpose of this proposed project is to explore how the existing I-Corps curriculum (i.e., the I-Corps canonical program and I-Corps-L program) can be adapted to train social and behavioral scientists to establish sustained working relationships with policy conduits in the public and nonprofit sectors. The ultimate aim of the work is to enhance the exchange of expertise, ideas, and discoveries between the academic research communities and the nonprofit and public sectors. A team of 5 national experts, including an expert in the I-Corps training protocol, will participate in the existing I-Corps programs and observe the delivery of each I-Corps training module. They will use the information and knowledge obtained during each module session to determine how best to adapt the existing I-Corps training programs for use in policy and nonprofit settings. The team will then further refine and adapt the existing I-Corps training programs into a special I-Corps Policy and Nonprofit (I-Corps-PNP) training curriculum that can be tested in a formal pilot with social and behavioral scientists in the future.
This proposed project will determine whether, and how, the I-Corps training paradigm can be used to train social and behavioral scientists to develop the appropriate skills to successfully translate knowledge and expertise to contribute to the practices in policy and nonprofit arenas. In addition, it will explore how the training program may sustain and espouse fruitful collaborations between social and behavior scientists and their policy and nonprofit counterparts. The adoption of such a curriculum by a variety of funding sources (e.g. nonprofit, governmental entities, and private foundations) could result in a new orientation for social science researchers - one that is sensitive to the practical challenges faced by policymakers and community stakeholders. In the long term, the created training curriculum will (1) help social and behavioral scientists to engage successfully with leaders in the policy and nonprofit communities, (2) promote growth in partnerships between academia, public policymakers, scientists and innovators that can lead to more holistic reflection on, and assessment of, more dimensions of social policy challenges and how best to address them, (3) cultivate nonprofit entrepreneurial capacities that reflect the knowledge and expertise resident in social and behavioral scientists, (4) increase knowledge sharing about potential innovations and policy options available to policymakers, (5) improve accessibility to the products of innovation generated by social scientists, and (6) facilitate more timely delivery of research and expertise to social policy considerations.
