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Diversity and Inclusion and Research Partnership Development: Can Seed Investments Really Help Promote Trans-institutional Collaborations?

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Conference

2019 CoNECD - The Collaborative Network for Engineering and Computing Diversity

Location

Crystal City, Virginia

Publication Date

April 14, 2019

Start Date

April 14, 2019

End Date

April 22, 2019

Conference Session

Track: Faculty - Technical Session 4

Tagged Topics

Diversity and Faculty

Page Count

11

DOI

10.18260/1-2--31756

Permanent URL

https://peer.asee.org/31756

Download Count

343

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Paper Authors

biography

Yousef Jalali Virginia Tech

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Yousef Jalali is a Ph.D. student in Engineering Education at Virginia Tech. He received a B.S. and M.S. in Chemical Engineering and M.Eng. in Energy Systems Engineering. His research interests include critical thinking, ethics, and process design and training.

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Christine Tysor Virginia Tech

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Chris Tysor is a Program Manager as well as the Diversity and Inclusion Coordinator at the Institute for Critical Technology and Applied Science (ICTAS) at Virginia Tech. She has been a Program Manager for large, interdisciplinary teams, individual PIs and managed DoD contracts since 2011. Diversity matters are very close to her heart and in 2016 the Institute Director asked her to become the Institute's first Diversity and Inclusion Coordinator. Chris manages the Diversity & Inclusion Investment Seed program at ICTAS which provides funding to a VT PI to establish or build collaborative research relationships with faculty from Historically Black Colleges and University's-Minority Serving Institutions (HBCU-MSIs). Chris received her undergraduate degree from Old Dominion University in Exercise Science and her master's degree in Health Promotion from Virginia Tech. She was in the United States Navy for 8 years and was a naval aviator flying the venerable CH-46 Seaknight or "Phrog" as it was affectionately known. Chris currently holds the highest level of Diversity Ambassador Certification from the VT Diversity Development program.
Chris is currently working closely with the Graduate School at Virginia Tech to help shape the HBCU-MSI Summit at Virginia Tech which is heading into it's fourth year. She is also working to build a more robust program for diversity programming and efforts at ICTAS. Chris resides in Blacksburg, VA.

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Vinod K. Lohani Virginia Tech

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Dr. Vinod K. Lohani is a Professor of Engineering Education and also serves as the Director of education and global initiatives at an interdisciplinary research institute called the Institute for Critical Technology and Applied Science (ICTAS) at Virginia Tech. He is the founding director of an interdisciplinary lab called Learning Enhanced Watershed Assessment System (LEWAS) at VT. He received a Ph.D. in civil engineering from VT. His research interests are in the areas of computer-supported research and learning systems, hydrology, engineering education, and international collaboration. He has served as a PI or co-PI on 16 projects, funded by the National Science Foundation, with a $6.4 million research funding participation from external sources. He has been directing/co-directing an NSF/Research Experiences for Undergraduates (REU) Site on interdisciplinary water sciences and engineering at VT since 2007. This site has 95 alumni to date. He also leads an NSF/Research Experiences for Teachers (RET) site on interdisciplinary water research and have 10 alumni. He also leads an NSF-funded cybersecurity education project and serves as a co-PI on two International Research Experiences for Students (IRES) projects funded by the NSF. He has published over 90 papers in peer-reviewed journals and conferences.

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Christian Matheis Guilford College

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Visiting assistant professor, Justice and Policy Studies.

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Abstract

A major research institute within a large land-grant university seeks to foster collaborations between research faculty at the land-grant institution and faculty and students at Historically Black Colleges and Universities (HBCUs) and Minority Serving Institutions (MSIs). Not only is the intent to help initiate and foster these research collaborations, but to advise HBCUs/MSIs students of the myriad of opportunities available to them to include experiential learning opportunities, undergraduate and graduate laboratory access, summer research programs, available scholarships and exposure to the graduate programs offered. The research institute initiated a Diversity and Inclusion Seed Investment funding program. Starting in fiscal year 2017, $203,480 was invested in 20 faculty to assist them with establishing and solidifying HBCU-MSI partnerships. Feedback has been continually collected to improve the program, now in its third year. In this paper, we first describe the original intent of the funding opportunity, how the opportunity has changed since its inception and how impactful this investment model has been. Preliminary findings will be presented, major criteria for funding will be explained, and outcome measures will be explored to assess the effectiveness of the program. Lastly, we present our plan for a more comprehensive assessment strategy, which moves beyond quantitative measures to investigate participants’ experiences of inclusion.

Jalali, Y., & Tysor, C., & Lohani, V. K., & Matheis, C. (2019, April), Diversity and Inclusion and Research Partnership Development: Can Seed Investments Really Help Promote Trans-institutional Collaborations? Paper presented at 2019 CoNECD - The Collaborative Network for Engineering and Computing Diversity , Crystal City, Virginia. 10.18260/1-2--31756

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