Visions and Voices:
Educational Leadership in the Research Center Environment

About the Workshop

National Science Foundation (NSF) funded Research Centers play a key role in furthering the advancement of science and engineering in the U.S., through their encouragement of interdisciplinary research and the integration of research and education. In creating Research Centers and emphasizing their education and diversity missions, NSF has broadened the vision of the scientist beyond that of a researcher, to include that of educator, mentor, team contributor, and public communicator. The NSF has given the Center leadership considerable latitude in realizing this vision, particularly in regard to education. Though each Center has developed its own education projects, there is sufficient commonality in goals and practice between Centers to motivate the education directors to meet and discuss issues of mutual interest.

An annual workshop of Center education leaders provides a forum wherein they can discuss the challenges unique to these Centers and develop strategies for their solution. These include developing innovative programs that fully utilize the Center mechanism, facilitating the meaningful involvement of scientists and engineers in educational activities, influencing change within a range of educational institutions, and formative and summative evaluations of education programs.

The 2nd annual workshop will focus on developing an understanding of the challenging issues that NSF Research Centers share, with the goal of creating an educational vision. The workshop will include complex topics specific to Centers that cover a range of educational levels and activities with a focus on determining how this influential group of educators can collaborate to increase their impact. As the STC’s, ERC’s and MRSEC’s have a broad range of interests, we will identify those critical areas of commonality that are appropriate for collaborative action. Additionally, we will solicit interest in the development of smaller, topic-oriented working groups to continue interacting throughout the year. An important outcome of this workshop will be establishing a voice and vision for the collective efforts of the NSF Research Centers that will strengthen their individual programs and set the stage for future NRCEN activities.

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Funding for this workshop has been provided by the National Science Foundation, as a Supplement to Cooperative Agreement No. AST-9876783.