Conference: The PUI Research Nexus: Faculty, staff, and administrators raise awareness, assess systemic barriers, and prepare to act in support of the research enterprise

In this project, regional inter-institutional workshops will be offered to teams of research administrators, institutional leaders, and faculty from Primarily Undergraduate Institutions (PUIs) to catalyze the identification of common barriers that limit research activity and the collaborative development of solutions to overcome these barriers to grow capability and capacity. Increasing the research capacity and infrastructure at PUIs will promote faculty and student engagement in research activities and broaden participation in the nation’s research enterprise. As a first step towards creating a collaborative and transformative PUI research capacity and capability building model that overcomes common research support structural barriers, this project will offer one-day workshops in the Midwest, Northwest, and Southeast regions of the United States. Teams of research administrators, faculty, and institutional leaders will gather to identify challenges, build regional support networks, and create shared resources that increase the success of their institutional research enterprise. The resulting suite of best practices will be the foundation of a research toolkit that can be implemented broadly in PUIs across the nation. 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.