Collaborative Research: EPIIC: Colleges Aligning Resources to Elevate Education and Regional STEM (CAREERS) Workforce

This project is a collaboration between Jefferson College (MO) and Ohlone College (CA). By increasing institutional capacity, this project will allow community colleges to expand their reach to the research and collaborative opportunities of the emerging innovation ecosystem, which has been out of their scope to date. To enable research development, Ohlone College and Jefferson College are working together to create the capacity infrastructure that will help their institutions and other similar institutions to support further engagement and attainment of extramural research funding in research and innovation. Because the partnerships between educational institutions, industry, and other organizations in the innovation ecosystem will be unique for each locale, the developed workforce model can potentially be adapted for customized collaborations that strengthen regional innovation ecosystems. This collaboration has the following infrastructure and capacity building goals: a) building and strengthening a grants and sponsored research infrastructure including training faculty in grant exploration and development, b) developing and expanding relationships with industry and educational partners, and c) establishing research pathways with 4-year college and university partners to create inter-institutional undergraduate research opportunities. The capacity building infrastructure for Jefferson College will include implementing a robust grants management system, bolstering industry connections through business and industry leadership team (BILT) mechanisms, and developing research training pathways with 4-year research institutions. For Ohlone, this will consist of branding the biotech program to better attract local partners, increasing research capacity for partnerships with industry, community, and educational partners, and developing a strategic plan for recruitment and retention of a diverse student body and future biotechnology workforce. The best practice sponsored research toolbox developed by this project could be shared with other community colleges as a template across the state and nationally. 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.