This NSF INCLUDES planning grant is funded by NSF Inclusion across the Nation of Communities of Learners of Underrepresented Discoverers in Engineering and Science (NSF INCLUDES), a comprehensive national initiative to enhance U.S. leadership in discoveries and innovations by focusing on diversity, inclusion and broadening participation in STEM at scale. The demographics of students in graduate programs within the University of California system do not reflect the overall population of California. The Program for Interdisciplinary Environmental Research (PIER) at the University of California (UC) San Diego is an exception to this overall pattern, with underrepresented minority (URM) student participation in the program exceeding that of the parent departments. The planning project activities enhance relationships between University of California, San Diego and select California State University campuses, as well as between departments participating in PIER. This work further develops interdisciplinary research and the PIER program as mechanisms for broadening participation in PhD STEM education. The activities also engage several junior faculty in the PIER program, providing them an opportunity to develop their roles within the national effort to increase participation in STEM education. This planning project focuses on all five of the NSF INCLUDES elements of the collaborative infrastructure: Shared vision, partnerships, goals and metrics, leadership and communication, and expansion, sustainability, and scale. The activities of the planning project establish new partnerships, and strengthen existing partnerships, across programs at various California State University campuses and the UC San Diego PIER program. The core activity is a workshop to bring together these various groups. This workshop, and the activities that precede and follow it, have intellectual merit through the aggregation of data on the success of PIER, barriers to the professional success of PIER alumni, and obstacles to graduate school experienced by California State University undergraduates. The workshop explores specific interventions that can be implemented to overcome these obstacles, and the merit of interdisciplinary research as a mechanism for overcoming challenges that prevent broader participation in STEM and STEM-dependent fields.
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.
