Increasingly, academic institutions across the country are employing Broader Impacts Specialists (BISs) to help Principal Investigators address the NSF Broader Impacts (BI) criterion. The Intellectual Merit of this proposal is a workshop for BISs to discuss how to better design BI activities. The goal is to establish the framework for a community of practice, that is, the enculturation of training of BISs, the advocacy and the evaluation of BIS-designed activities and the support of the BIS community. The 2014 Broader Impacts Infrastructure Summit seeks engagement between the NSF and the BIS community, sharing of best practices, and proposes organizing a national network of BISs.
The Broader Impacts of the summit are an increased understanding of the BI criterion and how BISs, especially those at Historically Black Colleges and Universities (HBCUs), Minority Serving Institutions (MSIs), and within EPSCoR jurisdictions, can create better BI activities and increased engagement by researchers. Activities in the workshop will highlight the contributions BISs and will include participants from HBCUs, MISs and EPSCoR jurisdictions.
