Planning Grant: Engineering Research Center for Integrating Native Solutions to Promote and Inform Resilient Engineering (INSPIRE)

PI: Karl Linden, University of Colorado Boulder

Co-PIs: Alden Yellowhorse, Navajo Technical University; Erin Whitney, University of Alaska Fairbanks; Gwynn R. Johnson, Portland State University; Jose Manuel Cerrato, University of New Mexico NSF Proposal #: EEC - 2124356

Title: Planning Grant: Engineering Research Center for Integrating Native Solutions to Promote and Inform Resilient Engineering (INSPIRE) Abstracts

Part 1 [non-technical]: This planning grant will support engagement of stakeholders to create an inclusive vision for an Engineering Research Center for Integrating Native Solutions to Promote and Inform Resilient Engineering (INSPIRE). The vision of the ERC INSPIRE is to create a new engineering approach for designing resilient systems by partnering with Indigenous peoples to create culturally and socially informed solutions to engineering challenges.

The fundamental issues this ERC will address focus on systemic problems faced by American Indians and Alaska Natives (AIAN) who have been underrepresented in the STEM workforce, and have long experienced low health status, lower life expectancy, and disproportionate disease burden due to systemic racism and settler colonialism. These issues are worsened by inadequate community infrastructure and basic services, all in the face of climate change-induced stresses which will require innovative, culturally inclusive, and context-relevant solutions.

This ERC will ultimately transform how we discuss, create, test, and implement engineered solutions through the incorporation of culturally and socially relevant design, with a goal to be more accessible to broad audiences, while improving equity, engagement, and inclusion in STEM. It will help transform society by shifting engineering education and industry practice to systematically integrate Indigenous knowledge into the engineering curriculum, workforce, and culture, and will ensure a quality-of-life improvement in AIAN communities.

Part 2 [Technical]: An ERC planning grant offers a unique opportunity to work on developing strong relationships with the stakeholder communities and organizations with whom we expect to work. The planning grant will enable us to co-design a strong ERC proposal for comprehensive convergence of research, education, and technology translation that will enable systemic change in American Indians and Alaska Natives (AIAN) communities and in engineering practice.

Our focus will be on knowledge advancement and discovery around new technology and integration processes that will renew infrastructure in AIAN communities. The ERC Planning grant will center around holding 3 workshops in each of the 3 geographical locations we intend to work in: Alaska Native communities, Pacific Northwest Native American communities, and Southwest/Four Corners area Native American communities.

Each workshop will be hosted by the local university Co-PI and will engage local community leaders, organizations, and the 5 university teams. Workshops will consist of team building activities, plenary talks by key community constituents on local issues, cultural exchange and understanding activities, and development of research themes. Each workshop will have an objective of contributing to the components of a strong ERC proposal and a goal of creating trust between the university teams, the invited organizations, and the local community leadership.

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.