NSF Award
2426365
This planning project aims to advance research capacities that build on existing research enterprise strengths and opportunities concerning the state of research across a consortium of eight institutional partners in the Equity in Architectural Education Consortium (EAEC). The consortium includes Florida A&M University, Florida International University, Hampton University, Howard University, Morgan State University, Tuskegee University, the University of Oklahoma, and the University of Michigan. While multi-institutional, interdisciplinary collaborations are widespread amongst our nation’s top research institutions, this project focuses on better understanding the challenges and opportunities that come from inter-institutional collaboration between institutions that are very different from one another, varying with respect to infrastructure, capacity, mission, size, location, populations served, and public/private status. The project posits that widespread change and growth in the nation’s research enterprise can be accelerated via mixed-type, complementary, inter-institutional collaboration, a model that has the potential to amplify existing resources and capacity at all participating institutions. <br/><br/><br/>The Equity in Architectural Education Consortium (EAEC, est. 2018) is an eight-member, inter-institutional network that spans R1, R2, D/PU, M2, MSI, HBCU, HSI, PWI, public, private, small, medium, large, rural, suburban, and urban institution types. The EAEC’s principal initiative, the Stacked Mentorship Program cultivates a meta-mentorship community among students, faculty, staff, and professionals of color, and other underrepresented minorities in architecture, creating a framework for inter-institutional collaboration. This planning project will design a national EAEC Fellowship Program that leverages the capacities of each consortium partner while serving as an agile model for building research capacity. Each of the eight institutional leads will gather insights from across their institution, clarify, and collectively design fellowship program initiatives and projects that address the goals and functional research infrastructure needs of EAEC partners across the eight sectors in the NSF GRANTED wheel. The projected impacts include: 1) intra- and inter-institutional capacity building; 2) research on the research enterprise; and 3) improvement of research infrastructure, especially regarding emerging and minority serving institutions. This model amplifies existing resources at all participating institutions because “plugging” gaps at one institution with complementary resources from another can protect human capital at historically under-resourced partners and allow for access to research opportunities out of the reach of a single institution. The planning project’s design process will result in a matrix of fellowship projects and initiatives that model approaches for a spectrum of research institutions to address various pathways to broadening and increasing research. This planning project spans organizations with very different resource bases (both strengths and gaps) and a broad diversity of priorities (overlapping and distinct). The project’s long-term objective is to create lasting effects by increasing the participation of historically underrepresented and under-resourced institutions and individuals in STEM, while developing a more equitable, globally competitive STEM workforce that better reflects the diverse and pluralistic composition of our nation’s research enterprise.<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.
