I³: Strengthening the Professoriate at Iowa State University (SPISU): A Campus Network to Enable Science & Diverse Communities

PROJECT OVERVIEW:

Intellectual Merit: Strengthening the Professoriate at Iowa State University (SPISU) strengthens and diversifies the professoriate by creating a community of scholars who focus on integrating broader impacts efforts into their research enterprise. SPISU brings together campus programs, many NSF funded, that share the mission of broadening participation of under-represented minorities and women in STEM fields, with the goal of networking, integrating, and sustaining the efforts of individual and multiple-investigator projects. The community also includes post-doctoral scholars and advanced graduate students mentored by faculty as they develop the awareness and skills needed to develop plans for broader impacts to complement their research skills.

The project supports these primary outcomes: (1) the creation of protocols and policies that use a faculty member’s broader impact work in annual performance evaluations and the promotion and tenure process. The goal is to develop evaluation tools and protocols that will add value to ISU processes and can be implemented at other universities. (2) Through SPISU, faculty develop research based broader impact programs that are based on the scholarship of best practices. This raises the intellectual strength of broader impact plans that faculty integrate into their research programs.

Broader Impacts: The proposed activity focuses on developing a new generation of faculty who integrate their broader impacts efforts with their research enterprise. The participating programs, which include ISU ADVANCE, Iowa AGEP, and other programs focused on K-grey education and diversity efforts benefit from a new group of collaborating faculty. Developing new P&T protocols and procedures to include evaluation of broader impacts work also increases the level of effort that faculty put toward broader impacts. Finally, as post-doctoral scholars and advanced graduate students are included in the SPISU activities, they will be trained for faculty positions as they develop broader impact plans that are based on the scholarship of best practices. Partnering with ISU ADVANCE, Iowa AGEP, and the Math Alliance, will ensure that women and under-represented minorities are actively recruited to participate in SPISU activities.