NSF Award
2324520
The proposed meetings will increase understanding of how research-related supportive activities assist early-career faculty and enhance their diverse institutional environments. Emerging research institutions, and the faculty who work there, have unique obstacles for launching and sustaining research projects. The project aims to develop guidance and resources tailored to new faculty, staff, and administrators at these institutions who can access them with no/minimal startup costs or time investment to advance their success in research. <br/><br/><br/>In partnership with state and national professional societies, the convenings will capture ideas for answering several questions in service of emerging research institutions, their diverse professoriate, and the Research Development (RD) professional knowledge base: 1) How can staff and administrators with various position descriptions engage in research development activities to coach, connect, and champion the faculty they support, especially those early in their research career?; 2) What are actionable metrics for individual faculty in terms of planning their research activities and for institutions in terms of strategic investment in their research enterprise?; and 3) How do you leverage the resources and expertise held by local, state, and national networks to the benefit of demographically diverse, early-career faculty in all types of institutional settings? Participants across these convenings will include RD and Research Administration professionals; university, college, and departmental leaders; and early-career faculty members. After the conclusion of the convenings, an executive summary report and list of recommendations will be generated (and shared out to professional networks) organized around the guiding question themes of planting RD support seeds, accessing actionable metrics, and leveraging multiple knowledge bases toward supporting new faculty and emerging-research/minority-serving institutions. Through collaborations with national professional societies and a broadly relevant focus on early-career faculty and emerging research institutions, this project has the potential to produce recommendations, resources, and an engaged stakeholder community ("alliance”) focused on growing research infrastructure and capacity that could be nationally transformative.<br/><br/>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.
