Conference: Capacity Building for Research at Minority Serving Institutions: Infrastructure Research Readiness (CyBR-MSI: IRR)

Conducted by the American Society for Engineering Education (ASEE), this award seeks to increase the capacity of researchers from Minority-Serving Institutions (MSIs) to produce competitive proposals to National Science Foundation’s (NSF) Computer Science and Engineering (CISE) core programs. The purpose of the Capacity Building for Research at Minority-Serving Institutions: Infrastructure Research Readiness (CyBR-MSI: IRR) program is threefold: (1) to help participants assess their campuses’ research infrastructure and prioritize improvements; (2) to form a community of practice among researchers and research infrastructure administrators from MSIs focused on capacity building of research infrastructure; and (3) to co-create, with campus leadership, an action plan for research ready infrastructure for strong grant proposals for NSF CISE core programs.

Using the same theoretical tenets and based on formative and summative evaluation data from ASEE’s prior CyBR-MSI efforts, the CyBR-MSI: IRR program comprises five components: (1) a Request for Proposals (RFP), (2) a Research Infrastructure Assessment Tool (RIAT), (3) an overarching Community of Practice (CoP) for up to 12 research teams, (4) a Mentoring Program (MP) that will provide each research team with coaching to support their progress throughout the program, and (5) a facilitated Culminating Action Planning Meeting (CAP) that will guide teams and their campus leadership with templates and mentoring to create an action plan to launch on their campuses to improve their infrastructure research readiness (IRR) to increase their capacity for CISE core research. By supporting MSIs to increase competitiveness for public research funds, this project will impact high proportions of nontraditional students and students of color, and their readiness to participate in the nation’s research enterprise.

The overarching goal of the CyBR-MSI program is to increase the participation and competitiveness of Historically Black Colleges and Universities (HBCUs), Hispanic-Serving Institutions (HSIs), and Tribal Colleges and Universities (TCUs) for CISE core programs (e.g., research funding in artificial intelligence, cyber-physical systems, cybersecurity, and other core research topics) through structured programs of community building, professional development, guided inquiry, practice, and mentoring. Leveraging its reach and influence to accelerate innovation, dissemination, and adoption of best practices in research, instruction, and DEI, ASEE supports and connects the MSI community to compete more effectively for NSF funds, activating a larger portion of the nation’s STEM talent.

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.