Conference: Growing Research Through Innovative Collaborations for Historically Black Colleges and Universities

This project will broaden participation in the federal funding landscape by providing support for participating Historically Black Colleges and Universities (HBCUs) to identify partner institutions and resources that complement their research strengths. Additionally, the project will provide a mechanism for utilizing knowledge gained during a workshop to benefit all HBCUs as they seek to grow research funding through impactful relationships. Project outcomes are intended to lead to a more equitable distribution of research funds and affordance of greater access and ability for HBCU researchers to meaningfully contribute to the research enterprise. The workshop will surface, seed, and brainstorm effective strategies for building sustainable and impactful research infrastructure at HBCUs. The goal of this project is to address systemic barriers to inclusion in the research landscape for HBCUs through the development and implementation of an Ideas Lab Workshop. The Ideas Lab format is designed to support the development of innovative and creative solutions to complex issues. Additionally, this format, affords participants support, time, and space to create new and expand existing collaborations among HBCUs that can lead to the sustainable growth of research infrastructure and drive research and innovation. This project will implement an Ideas Lab with 30 leaders from public and private, two-year and four-year HBCUs to to facilitate ideation of potentially transformative solutions for expanding research infrastructure and capacity at their institutions. 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.