2228180

Implementation Grant: Community-Driven Inclusive Excellence and Leadership Opportunities in the Geosciences (CIELO-G)

The Community-Driven Inclusive Excellence and Leadership Opportunities in the Geosciences (CIELO-G) project aims to transform the culture of the geoscience community by implementing various strategies. These strategies include supporting a diverse and multi-disciplinary team to address fundamental climate change and earth system science problems, training and synergistic learning with local educators to create a modern geoscience learning ecosystem in a bi-national community, increasing the number and success rate of students from diverse socio-economic backgrounds that become geoscience professionals, increasing awareness of the importance of geosciences and inspiring underserved communities and students, and improving graduate students' and postdoctoral scholars' training through evidence-based professional development covering both technical and soft skills.

To achieve these goals, the project leaders adopt a collective impact approach that provides a foundation for innovative, robust research that incorporates community engagement. The collective impact (CI) model develops a network of community members, organizations, and institutions by advancing a common agenda, providing centralized support, promoting continuous communication, creating mutually reinforcing activities, and executing a shared measurement.

Programmatically, the project leaders will create cohorts of six graduate students, six high school and community college educators, two postdoctoral fellows along with junior faculty, and six faculty research mentors. These cohorts will engage in community research and collaborate with five local non-government organizations. Together with the local community, the project leaders will design and execute geoscience research projects that combine four essential elements: a basic science question addressing fundamental climate change and earth system science issues impacting the Paso del Norte region, use-inspired research which may lead to practical solutions for the community, socially relevant outcomes driving substantial changes of awareness towards the importance of geosciences in the community, and strong community engagement leading to a long-lasting and sustainable geoscience learning ecosystem in the region.

The project leaders have identified four initial research projects, recognizing that new projects may develop as the collective impact approach is implemented. These projects include urgent challenges around water and agriculture sustainability in arid lands, exploring interactions between geologic structure and water pathways, investigating intraplate earthquake hazards in West Texas and Southern New Mexico, and understanding and mitigating increasing urban heat and dust. These projects will be designed to address key science challenges while reaching deep into the communities that they will impact in an organic way, allowing them to evolve in response to continuous community input.

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.

The University Of Texas At El Paso

THE GOAL OF THIS FUNDING OPPORTUNITY, "CULTURAL TRANSFORMATION IN THE GEOSCIENCE COMMUNITY", IS IDENTIFIED IN THE LINK: HTTPS://WWW.NSF.GOV/PUBLICATIONS/PUB_SUMM.JSP?ODS_KEY=NSF22562

47.050 - Geosciences

NSF Office of Integrative Activities (OIA) [NSF]

El Paso, Texas 79968-0001 United States

Single Zip Code

Cultural Transformation in the Geoscience Community (22-562)

Amendment Since initial award the total obligations have increased 107% from $2,759,895 to $5,720,783.