Collaborative Research: Texas Alliance for Research on Sociological Issues

HSIs are substantially underfunded compared to other institutions of higher education due to relatively low endowment revenue and tuition fees. Chronic underfunding leads to infrastructural and technological disparities that disadvantage students as they pursue advanced educational and professional opportunities. This project creates an alliance between four Texas HSIs to improve institutional competitiveness through: 1) research focused on and directly relevant to creating opportunities across demographic and socio-economic groups; 2) the establishment of physical lab spaces with state-of-the-art computing resources and statistical analysis software; 3) the creation of a virtual lab across all four campuses to facilitate student and faculty mentorship and collaboration; and 4) preparation of students from HSIs to enter graduate programs. The project brings students and faculty together from R1, R2, and M1 classified HSIs to conduct research relevant to creating opportunities across all demographics and socio-economic groups through two interconnected studies. Applying multi-method comparative designs, these studies will advance a deeper understanding of attitudes, experiences, attitudes on immigration, and other thematic areas to address core questions on inequality and opportunity. The creation of physical and virtual lab spaces for these studies will foster equal participation in scientific innovation at each of the collaborating universities by allocating infrastructural resources in proportion to need. These labs will facilitate the development of research and the dissemination of important findings through yearly mini-conferences showcasing student and faculty work, academic publications targeting traditional disciplinary outlets, and white papers designed to make the research accessible to the general public. Collectively, the alliance of four universities will address four objectives: (1) the theoretical and methodological development of sociological research, (2) promoting research opportunities for students and faculty at under-resourced HSIs, (3) conducting meaningful research on critical sociological issues important to the Texas and national social context, and (4) creating a pipeline for students from HSIs into scientific training and doctoral graduate programs. 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.