Two-year colleges and smaller institutions of higher education play an important role in shaping the country's economic and computing workforce. Burgeoning interest in fields such as cloud computing and smart manufacturing have paved the path for adoption of advanced cyberinfrastructure practices in research and academic pursuits at these institutions. Expanding on the collective experience of groups engaged in various aspects of campus computing, the Building Research Innovation at Community Colleges (BRICCs) approach examines the research and educational needs from advanced cyberinfrastructure in such institutional settings. Led by CyberTeams, BRICCs offers an inclusive platform to develop and extend efforts in this space to the national level.
BRICCs is a unique opportunity to study campus computing characteristics at smaller institutions and community colleges. BRICCs adopts a multi-pronged approach that focuses on learning about the problems at hand, partnering with institutions to enable solutions, and finally communicating its findings to the broader research community. Fostering partnerships between knowledgeable cyberinfrastructure professionals and these institutions is a critical aspect of BRICCs. Toward achieving this, BRICCs will host virtual and in-person community workshops to explore avenues to broaden the impact of advanced cyberinfrastructure on campus computing at all levels. BRICCs will produce learning resources, workshop reports, support future funding efforts, and propose campus networking models that align with the research and academic pursuits of smaller institutions. As a collective of computing expertise, BRICCs serve as a collaborative space to address similar challenges in advancing cyberinfrastructure adoption in research and educational settings.
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.
