NSF Award
1933981
The Historically Black Colleges and Universities - Undergraduate Program (HBCU-UP) supports conferences and workshops that seek to increase the research and education capacity of science, technology, engineering, and mathematics (STEM) students and faculty at HBCUs. The University of Maryland Eastern Shore will support workshops at the annual meeting of the Waterbird Society in an effort to address the underrepresentation of African Americans in the areas of natural resource conservation and management. Undergraduate and graduate students from five institutions will attend this conference on November 8, 2019 to present their research, engage with speakers, and build a network of support. <br/><br/>During the one-day meeting, the 350 invited students will have the opportunity to attend panels that are focused on student success and careers, listen to speakers, present posters, attend poster sessions, and participate in discussions around demonstration papers. Students will come from the University of Maryland Eastern Shore, Hampton University, Delaware State University, Virginia State University, and Howard University. The Waterbird Society realizes that not all of the students who will attend will be interested in a niche as small as waterbirds. However, the goal of the workshop is to not only increase interest in the study of waterbirds, but rather to increase interest in the academic and career aspects of the natural sciences overall, natural resource conservation and management in particular.<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.
