NSF Award
2430496
In this Science, Technology, Engineering, and Math (STEM) Education Organizational Postdoctoral Research Fellowship project, three postdocs will be recruited to join a vibrant Discipline-Based Education Research (DBER) community at Cornell University and develop as future leaders. This work will serve the national interest by promoting the progress of science through interdisciplinary and multi-institutional education research projects and by developing the Cornell Interdisciplinary Discipline-Based Education Research (CIDER) postdocs as future leaders in science education through a comprehensive professional development program that includes research mentoring and development, network building, leadership, teaching opportunities, and career planning. The CIDER program will nurture an inclusive, supportive, and diverse community of emerging scholars using a nested mentoring approach. By working together as a PI-team to engage in and refine CIDER's approach, there will be impacts on the postdoc mentoring system across Cornell DBER, which affects future scholars beyond the life of this grant. CIDER postdocs will also provide workshops to national audiences on developing DBER scholars and organize an Upstate New York DBER conference including faculty from community colleges, primarily undergraduate institutions, and PhD-granting institutions. The conference will provide a venue to share the range of research activities across the local community and include a collaborative session about designing and assessing the outcomes of DBER postdoc programs. These events strengthen the STEM education community more broadly and provide multiple ways to disseminate findings.<br/><br/>The CIDER postdoc program relies on a nested mentoring approach to provide mentoring, guidance, and support to the CIDER postdocs. This approach avoids a hierarchical, top-down mentoring relationship and instead embraces mentoring as a partnership among a constellation of mentors, postdocs, and their networks and resources. To support interdisciplinary research, the CIDER postdocs will each work with Cornell DBER research mentors from multiple disciplines to design and conduct research aligned with their interests and career goals, and leverage insights across DBER fields. To support work at multiple institutions, the research mentors will help CIDER postdocs form networks to conduct their research in multiple contexts. This approach will involve engaging connections the PI team has previously established, attending conferences together, inviting outside speakers to give seminars in multiple departments throughout Cornell, and hosting a regional conference with instructors and researchers from multiple institution types. The application of the postdocs’ research results will contribute to broadening participation in STEM and improving STEM education for students from multiple institution types and disciplines, both directly through the research activities and indirectly through dissemination. The intellectual merits also lie in the long-term research activities of the CIDER postdocs as a result of the professional development opportunities afforded through this program.<br/><br/>This project is funded by the Science, Technology, Engineering, and Mathematics (STEM) Education Postdoctoral Research Fellowship Program (STEM Ed PRF) with co-funding from the Improving Undergraduate STEM Education Program (IUSE:EDU) and the EDU Core Research: Building Capacity in STEM Education Research (ECR:BCSER) Program. The STEM Ed PRF Program aims to enhance the research knowledge, skills, and practices of recent doctorates in STEM, STEM education, education, and related disciplines to advance their preparation to engage in fundamental and applied research that advances knowledge within the field. The NSF IUSE:EDU Program supports research and development projects to improve the effectiveness of STEM education for all students. ECR: BCSER is designed to build the capacity of individuals to carry out high-quality, fundamental STEM education research in STEM learning and learning environments, broadening participation in STEM fields, and STEM workforce development.<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.
