EAGER: Collaborative Research: Networking Faculty Seeds for Collective Change in the Geosciences

The PIs plan to create a professional development curriculum that is highly tailorable to an individual's particular institutional context. They seek to recruit 10 Seeding Diversity Fellows from 10 different universities who will then bring on board another two partners to join the team. Each team of three will then identify gatekeeping mechanisms that impede the ability of their particular institution to recruit, retain, and include diverse faculty and students in the geosciences. The proposed curriculum will implement and research an innovative use of social network analysis as a tool for participants to identify potential collaborators so that, together, they can collectively change departmental beliefs and behaviors. The PIs will also develop and research three, new, mixed-reality simulations that combine artificial intelligence with human conversational intuition to teach participants how to manage conflicts while advocating for systemic changes in university and departmental procedures. Building off of the work from the pilot GOLD:GeoDES project, these new simulations will extend beyond individual actions and move more toward coordinating and leveraging social networks to effect institutional change.

  • Focus: Faculty
  • Team: Kathleen Quardokus Fisher 
  • Award Number: #2039148
  • Award Amount: $41,995.00
  • Contact: Kathleen Quardokus Fisher (kquardokus@gmail.com)