Planning: Using Emerging Technologies for Increasing Student Enrollment and Learning in Infrastructure and Building Construction Technology at HBCUs

This HBCU-Excellence in Research planning grant will help bridge the gap between industry and higher education. The project aims to contribute to current US efforts to improve national infrastructure by spearheading construction outputs, gathering comprehensive information on the current and future employment skills that are needed from the infrastructure, and building construction firms.

Properly training HBCU infrastructure and building construction technology program students with the industrial-needed emerging technologies will 1) equip groups underrepresented with employment skills and enable them to have equitable access to personal economic success, and 2) ensure the industry has sufficient and skilled workforces to meet the growing demand for construction services and deliver quality projects on time and within budget.

This one-year HBCU-EiR planning grant will help the research team to develop a full proposal for a three-year HBCU-EiR research project which aims to use emerging technologies to encourage underrepresented minority students to pursue advanced infrastructure and building construction degrees at HUBCs and prepare the students for careers in the infrastructure and building construction industry. Hence, the primary goal is to explore and strengthen the collaborative relationships with the infrastructure and building construction industrial and academic experts to understand the gaps, and current and future needs of employment skills to enhance the intellectual merit of the planned research.

The secondary goal is to create opportunities (i.e., new workshops) to expose emerging technologies in construction to K-12 schools, community colleges, and HBCU undergraduate programs to enhance the broader impacts of this planning grant. Moreover, the team will network with the administrators of HBCUs’ construction technology programs to exchange information, resources, and best practices (i.e., curriculum and course modules).

As a result, an HBCU Infrastructure and Building Construction Consortium (HBCU-IBCC) will be established to further enhance the broader impacts.

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.