Craig Stewart - US grants

EIA-0116050
Michael A. McRobbie
Indiana University - Bloomington

MRI: Creation of the AVIDD Data Facility: a Distributed Facility for Managing, Analyzing, and Visualizing Instrument-Driven Data

This is a proposal for equipment acquisition under the Major Research Instrumentation (MRI) program to support research and student training across a broad range of instrument-driven data-intensive science areas. The proposed distributed facility for managing, analyzing, and visualizing instrument-driven data would address the data life cycle consisting of data capture and remote data reduction; high speed data transfer; real time data analysis and processing; data storage; data retreival; data analysis and postprocessing; data visualization; and the use of remote data stores. Among the research projects enhanced and enabled by the proposed facility are both computer science and applications area projects, for example work on end-to-end real time data management for remote control and use of beam-line systems by X-ray crystallographers

Indiana University (IU) was funded in September 2003 by the NSF to be part of the nine-partner TeraGrid. (TG) as a resource provider (RP). IU has already demonstrated its commitment and ability to manage such a project by integrating its resources into the TeraGrid by October 2004. This proposal outlines a five-year management and operations plan for the set of resources and services to be provided by IU to the TeraGrid. IU will commit to TeraGrid users a substantial fraction of its available resources. A total of 610,000
SUs (raw service units) will be contributed in FY2004/05 (on a mixture of current processor architectures in support of traditional supercomputing, reaching 13,484,000 SUs by FY2008/09. The University will focus on providing unique computational resources such as GRAvity PiPE (GRAPE) boards and a Condor pool to national users. Finally, they will address the growing data-centric computing needs of research users by providing easy-to-use data storage resources in the form of online storage, archival storage, databases, and data collections; with a focus on life sciences, and for new user communities. Storage goals will be 10TB (online) and 0.5PB (archival) in FY2004/05, reaching 116TB (online) and 5.6PB (archival) by FY2008/09.

As a TeraGrid Resource Provider, IU intends to deploy a strategy that invests heavily in people, contributes supplementary and distinctive resources, and leverages IU.s existing strengths in research areas such as community grids, grid portals, and science gateways. IU is experienced in and committed to a service- and data-centric approach to enabling users. The University believes that the key to the TeraGrid's widespread success is to deliver easy-to-use computing services to new communities of users who have hitherto been unable to make use of the existing NSF cyberinfrastructure. To implement IU.s RP plan, this proposal requests funds for seven dedicated full-time equivalents (detailed in the project description and budget narrative sections) and for nominal and proportional maintenance for IU's TeraGrid connectivity infrastructure. IU's TG-dedicated human resources will be used to help users port applications to TG, to enable new users with gateways and portals, to perform regional and national outreach, to manage IU's TG project and resources, and to assist the national TeraGrid effort. IU will focus specifically on bringing to the TG entirely new communities of users. As an eight-campus university in the State of Indiana, IU is deeply committed to collaboration and will develop collaborative relationships with the TG community nationally.

The Extensible Terascale Facility (ETF), or TeraGrid, (TG) involves nine resource providers operating high-performance computing, information, and visualization facilities, interconnected with a dedicated optical network and integrated with a set of common software that presents the user community with a cohesive set of resources and services. On October 1, 2004, the ETF will conclude a three-year construction effort to create this distributed environment and will transition into an operational state. This proposal outlines a set of services to be provided at Indiana University (IU) as part of the TeraGrid system.

IU was funded, along with Purdue University, in September 2003 by the NSF to be part of the TeraGrid via the Terascale Extensions Program (TEP). As part of the ongoing maintenance and operations (M&O) phase, IU requests funding via this proposal for early operations of its ETF facilities and for TG services for the period from October 1, 2004 through March 30, 2005. Resources and services described herein will be provided to the scientific and engineering community by IU as one of the nine TG RPs. This proposal describes both IU-specific functions as well as IU.s participation in TG-wide activities.

This project, creating a Data Capacitor and a Metadata/Web Services server, addresses two clear and widespread challenges: the need
-To store and manipulate large amounts of data for short periods of time (hours to several days) and
-For Reliable and unambiguous publication, discovery, and utilization of data via the Web.

The Data Capacitor, a 250 Terabyte short term data store with very fast I/O and the Metadata/Web Services server, a robust server, enable the institution and collaborators to adopt and depend upon the Web services for exchange of research data. Research and development efforts at IU will create the tools required for the Data Capacitor to be used to its fullest. Progress and research possibilities in many disciplines have been fundamentally changed by the abundance of data now so rapidly produced by advanced digital instruments. Scientists face the present challenge of drawing out from these data the information and meaning contained within. IU has established a significant cyberinfrastructure composed of high performance computing systems, archival storage systems, and advanced visualization systems spanning two main campuses in Indianapolis and Bloomington, and connected to national and international networks. This institution enhances its infrastructure in ways that will result in qualitative changes in the research capabilities and discovery opportunities of a broad array of scientist that work with large data sets. The Data Capacitor is expected to become a development platform and testbed for new cyberinfrastructure, as well as a proof of concept for large capacity, short-term storage devices. On the other hand, the Metadata/Web Services server enables the institution to establish a leadership position in standards-based data dissemination in many fields.

Broader Impact: The Data Capacitor enhances current practice in relevant scientific communities, enables technology transfer and commercialization, develops a 21st century workforce, and ensures public understanding of the value of science. Deliberate use of objective metrics in all areas of broader impact ensures that new discoveries, technology development, educational activities, and public information efforts translate into benefit for the scientific community and society as a whole. Women and underrepresented groups will be drawn into computing-intensive sciences and applications of computing.

Proposal #: CNS 07-23054
PI(s): Fox, Geoffrey C.
Hayden, Linda B.; LeCompte, Malcolm; Pierce, Marlon E.; Stewart, Craig A.
Institution: Indiana University
Bloomington, IN 47402-1847
Title: MRI/Acq.: Acquisition of Polar Grid: Cyberinfrastructure for Polar Science

Project Proposed:

This project, acquiring a sophisticated instrument that addresses crucial ice-sheet science, enables a new generation of high resolution ice-sheet models with realistic boundary conditions that requires distributed PolarGrid Cyberinfrastructure to gather and process data and assimilate these with large simulations. PolarGrid consist of an intermittently disconnected field and base grids feeding information to "lower 48" data and computing resources. True real-time processing at the field camp is backed up with increasing fidelity, but increasing delay at the base and "lower 48" systems. The requested system includes an expedition grid consisting of ruggedized laptops in a field grid to a low power multi-core based camp cluster. A prototype and two production grids feed into a Teraflops system at Indiana and Elizabeth City State Universities. PolarGrid will be integrated with TeraGrid for both resource utilization and curricula sharing. Modern open data access standards will be followed so that raw processes, and simulated data can be archived outside PolarGrid by and for the science and engineering community. The innovative architecture of PolarGrid with intermittently disconnected components also has applications to other power- and bandwidth-challenged applications. The instrument responds to the recent polar satellite observations that show disintegration of ice shelves in Antarctica and the speed-up of several glaciers in Greenland.

Broader Impact: The infrastructure addresses an important current problem that touches all beings in one way or another, the key issue of polar ice disintegration. Strong educational activities are involved, mainly through the training of students. ECSU, a historically black university, involves undergraduate students through new curricula and research experiences.

National Science Foundation
Office of Cyberinfrastructure


Proposal # 0829462
PI name Bradley Wheeler
Institution Indiana University
Title ?Cyberinfrastructure Software Sustainability and Reusability Workshop?

Project Summary

This workshop proposal targets an examination of sustainability and reusability of software developed, supported, and used by the NSF community. Specifically, workshop goals include: examination of current software evaluation and adoption models by labs and virtual organizations; examination of long-term sustainability models; and mechanisms for supporting sustainability via funding organizations, open source, and commercialization. White papers on these topics and others will be solicited of the community in advance of the workshop. Results from the workshop will be documented, as well as recommendations to NSF. Intellectual merit is identified as the exploration of this topic and a resulting deeper understanding of how we as a country of scientists and educators deal with sustaining community sourced software over the long term. Broader impact is multi-dimensional: in addition to the potential transformative nature of resulting actions and strategies by both the community and funding agencies, the proposal will make explicit funds available for HBCU and MSI participation.

This subproject is one of many research subprojects utilizing the resources provided by a Center grant funded by NIH/NCRR. The subproject and investigator (PI) may have received primary funding from another NIH source, and thus could be represented in other CRISP entries. The institution listed is for the Center, which is not necessarily the institution for the investigator. This is a request for a renewal of TG DAC TG-MCB070097T. I would like to request an extension of 90 days to complete the work (fall was a busy time...)

The National Science Foundation?s strategy for 21st century innovation depends explicitly on the creation and effective use of cyberinfrastructure. The National Science Foundation has established a Campus Bridging Task Force to address the broad issues involved in improving campus interactions with cyberinfrastructure. These issues include identifying best practices, promoting interoperability of software across the nation and around the world, suggesting policies for research universities, and identifying solicitations to support this work.

Cyberinfrastructure must be coordinated on campus, regional, and national levels. Researchers, research groups, and campuses must be bridged through virtual organizations and telecollaborations. The Campus Bridging Task Force is charged with investigating practical steps that the US, led by the NSF, can take to create a more effective, better interconnected national cyberinfrastructure. This proposal funds a meeting to be held to coordinate the task force.

The intellectual merit of this activity is in the identification of important challenges facing the nation's science and engineering research communities, and assembling a group of national leaders in information technology who will be qualified to offer excellent intellectual as well as practical insight on ways to identify best practices and strategies for bridging cyberinfrastructure
from the campus level to national collaborations.

The broader impact of this activity will result from discussion and suggestions about how to better integrate smaller schools, particularly Minority Serving Institutions, into the national cyberinfrastructure.

An InCommon Roadmap for NSF Cyberinfrastructure
Abstract
PI: William Barnett


The InCommon project describes activities to produce a guidance document for use by NSF Cyberinfrastructure (CI) projects, their researchers, their users, and campus policy makers, in adopting and using the technologies and policies that make up the identity federation among US campuses called InCommon. Working off existing InCommon documentation, this Roadmap document will focus as much on the motivations and policies as the technologies for joining and participating in the InCommon federation. The document will include advice to NSF as well. The document will be produced under the auspices of an editorial board of technical and policy experts with approval of a final version to be approved by the ACCI Campus Bridging Task Force. Metrics of success for the Roadmap document relate to increased membership and use of federated identity. These metrics therefore address quantitatively the criterion of Broader Impact. Intellectual merit is noted by the proposal as how to overcome the policy, technical, and social challenges in producing clear and concise guidance.


In reality, a single expert will be doing the vast majority of work on this document. The creator of GridShib, along with the identified members of the editorial board, are highly qualified to produce a sound Roadmap. A key driver for adoption and use of this document will be in the motivations for use of InCommon, properly situated as the first thrust area. The proposal includes a detailed timeline and defines the three thrust areas appropriately. The process of using a stellar editorial board with required approval of the ACCI Campus Bridging Task Force ensures the release of a Roadmap that is both technically sound and fully responsive to the needs of CI-centric projects and capabilities of campus CI. If successful, this document will be a cornerstone for wider scale adoption and use of federated identity as defined by the InCommon Federation, the predominant trust fabric in existence today across academic campuses, while providing NSF a reference for the community in defining a path toward achieving the goal of shared CI.

The integration of cyberinfrastructure resources from the campus perspective is critical to the support for the ever-increasing level of cross-disciplinary and cross-organizational aspects of scientific research. To assist in this goal, the Campus Bridging Task Force has been organizing a series of workshops focused on key areas that are critical to a successful campus cyberinfrastructure implementation. Previous workshops have been held in April and August, 2010 and have focused on Networking and Data-centric issues and Software and Services.

Senior campus leaders are a critical component in the development and successful implementation of campus cyberinfrastructure and the task force has planned a workshop that will be focused on this area. The meeting will provide a forum and opportunity for senior university administrators to offer their perspectives as to what issues must be solved to build a coherent campus cyberinfrastructure at their institution.

The workshop participants will also have an opportunity to provide feedback, input, and suggestions on the draft document and recommendations of the Campus Bridging Taskforce of the NSF Advisory Committee on Cyberinfrastructure. This information will be valuable to developers, deployers, other campus administrators, and to the NSF itself in helping the organization plan future NSF programs that will merge with campus cyberinfrastructure and to provide the best cyberinfrastructure support to scientific and engineering researchers.

The NSF Software Infrastructure for Sustained Innovation (SI2) program solicitation states that software is "central to NSF's vision of a Cyberinfrastructure Framework for 21st Century Science and Engineering (CIF21)," and goes on to emphasize that in general software is essential to computational and data-enabled science. Indeed, the SI2 program is one vehicle by which the NSF hopes to enable sustained and well supported software providing services and functionality needed by the US science and engineering community. This yearlong study of cyberinfrastructure projects will identify best practices in the development, deployment, and support of robust cyberinfrastructure software.

Through a combination of detailed case studies and surveys of software producers and users, the investigators will identify best practices for the process of moving software from a "discovery" process to well maintained and sustainable infrastructure for 21st century science and engineering, focusing in particular on the following: Given a piece of software that provides interesting capabilities and a community that wants to use (and possibly contribute to the further development of) that software, what steps are necessary to transform that software from "interesting tool" to "robust and widely used element of national infrastructure, contributing to the NSF vision for CIF21" - ands then support and maintain that tool sustainably? This research will lead to greater availability of widely usable software tools and curriculum materials, increasing the quality of education in computer science, computational science, and STEM disciplines.

Intellectual Merit: This award to Indiana University (IU) is to establish the National Center for Genome Analysis Support (NCGAS) in partnership with the Texas Advanced Computing Center (TACC). The NCGAS will be an innovative service center (core facility) that supports the national community of NSF-funded researchers who use genome assembly software, particularly software suitable for assembly of data from next-generation sequencers; large-scale phylogenetic software; and other genome analysis software requiring large amounts of memory. This center will be a general source of software support and services that will be provided on the Mason large memory computer cluster at IU, on the TACC Gordon system, and on the San Diego Supercomputer Center Dash system. The NCGAS will provide services such as use of cluster-based genome analysis software, storage of submitted data sets, and a repository of open source genome analysis software. Services will particularly support analyses of next-generation sequencer output for de novo assembly, metagenomic projects, and resequencing.

Broader Impacts: The NCGAS will develop innovative solutions to current needs in genome assembly and analysis. It will establish a core of experts and software tools to support research on a variety of nationally funded cyberinfrastructure systems, and will add to the suite of available systems a large memory cluster ideal for this work. By developing a community of investigators and technologists and exploring new modalities of provisioning computational resources, such as "on demand" computing, this project aspires to become a sustainable model for the ongoing, and increasing, need for sequence analysis. The NCGAS website provides up-to-date information at http://pti.iu.edu/ncgas/.

The field of supercomputing is experiencing a rapid change in system structure, programming models, and software environments in response to advances in application requirements and in underlying enabling technologies. Traditional parallel programming approaches have relied on static resource allocation and task scheduling through programming interfaces such as MPI and OpenMP. These methods are reaching their efficiency and scalability limits on the new emerging classes of systems, spurring the creation of innovative dynamic strategies and software tools, including advanced runtime system software and programming interfaces that use them. To accelerate adoption of these next-generation methods, a unique environment is being created and operated that provides a comprehensive ensemble of state-of-the-art runtime system software and programming interfaces. Taken from previous research and development projects, some at the host institution, Indiana University, and others from premiere research organizations across the nation, these execution systems are integrated in a single supported Reconfigurable Execution Framework Testbed (REFT) and made available to parallel application algorithm developers as well as researchers in advanced tools for parallel computing. The basic REFT hardware capabilities include a medium- scale heterogeneous Linux cluster with multi-core sockets, high-bandwidth interconnect, and mass storage; field-programmable gate arrays; and instrumentation for power measurement. ParalleX-based HPX-3, ETI SWARM, Berkeley GasNet, Rice University?s Habanero, Illinois? Charm++, Cray Chapel, IBM X-10, and UPC among other programming and execution models comprise the major components of this unique facility.

Supercomputing is making a sharp corner turn in form, function, and methodologies. Unfortunately, few in the field are skilled in the use of the emerging execution and programming models that are becoming increasingly critical to effectively utilizing supercomputers to deliver quality science for extreme-scale applications?either those at the highest end of the performance spectrum (Petaflops currently and Exaflops at the end of the decade) or strong-scaled fixed-size problems. REFT serves the NSF computational science community by dramatically lowering the barrier to training, experimentation, and adoption of new dynamic execution methods and systems. It provides full documentation, on-line tutorials, in-house classes, and workshops for skill development and community building for the broad US HPC community to accelerate application, evaluation, and exploitation. As a repository for competing and complementary software environments it provides a single site for conducting comparative studies by end-users to establish best practices. As an NSF resource, it serves to expedite and further goals of computational science by enabling effective application of the next generation Petaflops-class computer systems of millions of cores and eventual Exascale systems with billion-way concurrency.

High Performance Computing System Acquisition: Jetstream - a self-provisioned, scalable science and engineering cloud environment

Jetstream will be a new type of computational research resource open for the national (nonclassified) research community - a data analysis and computational resource that US scientists and engineers will use interactively to conduct their research anytime, anywhere. Jetstream will complement current NSF-funded computational resources and bring a cloud-based system to the NSF computational resources incorporating the best elements of commercial cloud computing resources with some of the best software in existence for solving important scientific problems. This system will enable many US researchers and engineers to make new discoveries that are important to understanding the world around us and will help researchers make new discoveries that improve the quality of life of American citizens.

In terms of technical details, Jetstream will be a configurable large-scale computing resource that leverages both on-demand and persistent virtual machine technology to support a much wider array of software environments and services than current NSF resources can accommodate. As a fully configurable "cloud" resource, Jetstream bridges the obvious major gap in the current ecosystem, which has machines targeted at large-scale High-Performance Computing, high memory, large data, high-throughput, and visualization resources. As the open cloud for science, Jetstream will:

*Provide "self-serve" academic cloud services, enabling researchers or students to select a VM image from a published library, or alternatively to create or customize their own virtual environment for discipline- or task-specific personalized research computing.

*Host persistent VMs to provide services beyond the command line interface for science gateways and other science services. For example, Jetstream will become a primary host of the popular Galaxy scientific workbench and its main datasets, bringing many Galaxy users to the NSF ecosystem from day one.

*Enable new modes of sharing computations, data, and reproducibility.

*Expand access to the NSF XSEDE ecosystem by making virtual desktop services accessible from institutions with limited resources

The study of genomes is a critical and rapidly growing component in understanding the variability of life, biological functions, population dynamics, and how organisms respond to external influences. Genomics has qualitatively improved our ability to investigate biological dynamics and to make important discoveries that are the foundations for understanding topics such as environmental change, developing and protecting crops, and improving health outcomes. Genome analysis, however, is a significant challenge for the practicing biologist. Most biologists who need to undertake genome science are not sufficiently expert in the relevant analytical tools, or understand the complex workflows required to get from the initial data generated by sequencers to a biologically meaningful analyzed result. In addition, few have access to the supercomputing resources and large-scale storage required for processing and managing genomics data. The National Center for Genome Analysis Support (NCGAS) addresses these challenges by providing an integrated service comprised of expert consulting and educational services, hardened and optimized software available through easy to use web-based workflow management tools, large memory supercomputers, and large scale data storage and publishing facilities. These resources are particularly useful for researchers from smaller, and minority serving, institutions that typically do not have access to the required expertise and cyberinfrastructure, yet whose investigations are equally important. Since its inception in 2011, the NCGAS has supported over 80 research projects representing over $61M in funded research. It engaged in 51 training events that served 691 individuals, of which 241 were from traditionally underserved populations.

The NCGAS (http://ncgas.org) was established in 2011 through a National Science Foundation ABI development award to help the national research community complete genomics research that requires data management and computational infrastructures at scale. NCGAS is a partnership among the Indiana University Pervasive Technology Institute, the Pittsburgh Supercomputing Center, the Texas Advanced Computing Center, and the San Diego Supercomputing Center. It meets the technology challenges of modern genome science by providing excellent bioinformatics consulting services for genome analysis, particularly genome and transcriptome assembly, including research design, data analysis and visualization. It optimizes, supports, and delivers genome analysis software on national supercomputing systems such as those funded by the NSF eXtreme Digital (XD) program and coordinated by the eXtreme Science and Engineering Discovery Environment (XSEDE) and the Open Science Grid (OSG). The NCGAS maintains and supports easy-to-use gateways, including Galaxy web portals, for genome analysis workflows that lower barriers for scientist to create, execute, document, and share genomics analyses. It distributes software tools for genome analysis to research computing facilities and the general research community so that IT managers can more easily install these tools on their systems. It provides long-term archival storage services. The NCGAS provides a digital library resource for the dissemination of data sets, publications, reports, or collections of files that will allow research to be visible and data to be re-used for decades to come. It delivers education and outreach programs on genome analysis, interpretation, and data management to biology faculty and students nationally. These programs will enhance the technology literacy of practicing scientists and help grow the bioinformatics workforce. These services are particularly available to smaller institutions across the country without access to supercomputers, bioinformatics expertise, or training. The NCGAS will enable breakthroughs that would not be possible without advanced cyberinfrastructure support.

The NSF Scholarships in Science, Technology, Engineering, and Mathematics (S-STEM) program supports the retention and graduation of high-achieving, low-income students with demonstrated financial need. This collaborative project led by the University of Memphis, the University of Colorado at Denver, and Indiana University-Purdue University Indianapolis will provide scholarships to students pursuing baccalaureate degrees in engineering and mathematics. Through its five years of funding, this project will support at least 50 students at each institution, for a total of 150 unique students. Administrators and faculty from the partner institutions' colleges or schools of engineering and mathematics departments will partner to provide academic, social, professional, and peer networking, as well as career preparation. The lack of STEM identity is a fundamental reason that students often cite for leaving STEM majors and careers. This project will investigate mechanisms for supporting a diverse set of students in an urban context in their development of a STEM identity. Results of this project will help meet the national need for a highly skilled workforce in engineering and mathematics and generate knowledge about STEM identity across all disciplines.

This project seeks to increase the recruitment, retention, student success, and graduation rates of high-achieving undergraduate students with financial need, who are majoring in mathematical sciences and engineering at each institution. The partnering institutions plan to implement ambitious but feasible strategies that contribute to student academic success, development of STEM identity, and workforce readiness. In addition, they plan to incentivize substantial student participation in project activities through a badging system. Activities for mathematics and engineering classes will be designed to support a high probability of student success. The institutions intend to conduct formative and summative evaluations that will focus on determining effectiveness and impact of the project activities, strategies, and adjustments. The project also plans to examine factors influencing development of STEM identity and the resulting impact on student success, attitudes, workforce readiness, and STEM self-efficacy. Attention will be paid to impact on first-generation students and students from other groups that are underrepresented in engineering and mathematics. Innovative aspects of the project will include deploying features from CourseNetworking software to provide scholars with evidence of their learning journey, while expanding a meaningful academic social network and building a STEM identity facilitated by a comprehensive, cloud-native software environment. CourseNetworking will include a student ePortfolio that will serve as a digital collection of each student's work and accomplishments. The ePortfolio will provide certification badges that mark the student's participation and will maintain a record of the student's attainment of knowledge, behaviors, and skill sets. The project will strive to develop and disseminate a vetted, practical, sustainable, and transportable model to recruit and retain high-achieving students with financial need and provide them with avenues for success in STEM studies and careers.

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.

Adaptations for Sustainable Policies and Increased Recruitment Excellence in Diversity (ASPIRED) at the University of Memphis will adapt evidence-based strategies from other ADVANCE institutions to change the institutional climate at the University of Memphis (UM) and increase gender equity in recruitment, hiring, retention, and advancement in STEM. UM needs a strategic institutional investment in recruitment and retention activities, coordinated initiatives across the institution, and improvement of institutional processes to foster a culturally and gender inclusive environment that promotes the advancement of STEM women faculty, especially URMs (Underrepresented minority). The ASPIRED strategies will serve as an exportable best-practice model with impacts far beyond the UM. Diversifying the faculty and improving the climate in STEM departments at UM is an important step towards closing the achievement gap by improving retention (e.g., URM student and faculty) and ultimately enhancing the STEM workforce in the Memphis region and beyond. Additionally, broader participation will be encouraged at the UM through opportunities to participate in UM-Connect STEM webinars, that will increase networking and collaboration as well as exposure to minority STEM leaders and academic leaders of the region.

ASPIRED aims to address four problems identified by STEM women faculty: 1) implicit bias, 2) isolation, 3) ambiguity and inequality in career advancement, and 4) poor work-life integration. To do so, ASPIRED will deploy three interventions across all STEM disciplines, each incorporating multiple strategies: UM-Intersect will improve awareness of diversity and inclusion best practices campus-wide to foster an inclusive, culturally responsive work environment through educating search committees, providing training on implicit bias using online case studies, and implementing department climate improvement workshops and grants; UM-Connect will improve social and professional connections to increase women faculty?s sense of belonging and career advancement through networking, and professional development opportunities; UM-Integrate will improve women faculty?s satisfaction with their work-life-family integration by developing a culture that values personal, familial, and professional roles through policy awareness and development as well as work-family integration.

The NSF ADVANCE program is designed to foster gender equity through a focus on the identification and elimination of organizational barriers that impede the full participation and advancement of diverse faculty in academic institutions. Organizational barriers that inhibit equity may exist in policies, processes, practices, and the organizational culture and climate. ADVANCE "Adaptation" awards provide support for the adaptation and adoption of evidence-based strategies to academic, non-profit institution of higher education as well as non-academic, non-profit organizations.

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.

This project aims to serve the national interest by improving academic success and broadening participation for engineering students at the University of Memphis. It has been shown that engineering identity and self-efficacy play a role in student retention and graduation rates. This study will examine the impact of mentoring and undergraduate research on developing students’ engineering identity and self-efficacy. An important aspect of the project is understanding how the proposed interventions in research and mentoring can aid college students who may not see themselves as “fitting in” with engineering as a means of broadening participation. This project will increase the use of undergraduate research as part of the curriculum, make research experiences accessible for all students, and promote broadening participation in engineering. The project team will adapt, implement, research, and evaluate a targeted active learning focused undergraduate research experience for which students will receive course credits towards their baccalaureate engineering degree. Using peer and faculty mentoring, students who begin research as early as their first year in college will continue in research and mentoring throughout their time as undergraduate students. It is expected that these interventions will help improve academic success and persistence as well as broaden participation in the engineering workforce.

The project goals are to improve academic success, retention, diversity, and inclusion in engineering at the University of Memphis by integrating educational interventions such as active learning through project-based research opportunities and peer mentoring that involves networking and role modeling. The educational interventions are designed to foster the development of engineering identity and self-efficacy in undergraduate students. Project activities that aim to foster an inclusive culture in engineering include research training units, innovation seminars, and mentoring. The successful implementation of this project is expected to increase awareness and interest in engineering majors and provide a new approach to recruiting students to engineering. Important outcomes of the project will be: 1) improving retention of all students in engineering; 2) making engineering majors at the University of Memphis more accessible to undecided freshmen, particularly for the purpose of broadening participation; and 3) supporting engineering identity growth, self-efficacy, and a sense of belonging for undergraduate engineering students. Though other projects have investigated some of the components addressed in this project, few have looked at them collectively, as this project will do. As such, this project will generate new knowledge in how to recruit, retain, and broaden participation in undergraduate engineering. In addition, Memphis area community college students and high school students will engage in research and mentoring through a one-day summer summit. The adapted undergraduate research and mentoring model will be disseminated through an established consortium and to other interested institutions. Project results will be disseminated through conference presentations and journal publications as well as through a dedicated website. The NSF IUSE: EHR Program supports research and development projects to improve the effectiveness of STEM education for all students. Through the Engaged Student Learning track, the program supports the creation, exploration, and implementation of promising practices and tools.

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.