Conference: NSF INCLUDES: Gathering to Create Culturally Relevant Biomimicry Pathways to STEM for Indigenous Students

会议：NSF 包括：齐聚一堂，为原住民学生创建与文化相关的 STEM 仿生途径

• 批准号: 2310189
• 负责人: Sara El-Sayed
• 金额: $ 10万
• 依托单位: Arizona State University
• 依托单位国家: 美国
• 项目类别: Standard Grant
• 财政年份: 2023
• 资助国家: 美国
• 起止时间: 2023-08-01 至 2024-07-31
• 项目状态: 已结题
• 来源: https://www.nsf.gov/awardsearch/showAward?AWD_ID=2310189&HistoricalAwards=false
• 关键词: Conference; NSF; INCLUDES; Gathering; Create

Indigenous students and Native ways of learning and knowing are vastly underrepresented in Science, Technology, Engineering, and Math (STEM) fields. To address this challenge, we propose an in-person gathering to gain an understanding across disciplines and worldviews. The purpose of this proposed gathering is to further the INCLUDES Initiative goal of catalyzing the STEM enterprise to be more inclusive by exploring culturally relevant biomimicry pathways to encourage more Indigenous students into STEM fields. We see this gathering as phase one of a multi-year collaboration that builds synergies between biomimicry, Traditional Ecological Knowledge (TEK), and Indigenous communities. Low enrollment by Indigenous students in STEM is attributed to STEM’s exclusive roots in Western science with little acknowledgment of Indigenous ways of knowing, along with limited curricular linkages to their lived experiences. To address this low representation, we postulate that biomimicry, an emerging STEM discipline of emulating nature to create sustainable designs, could attract Indigenous students. Biomimicry recognizes multiple scientific roots, many shared with Traditional Ecological Knowledge (TEK) of Indigenous peoples, of having a deep respect and relationship with nature. We propose a gathering where biomimicry acts as a bridge between Western and Indigenous knowledges, providing a pathway to broaden academic understanding of what constitutes valid science, thus engaging more Indigenous students in a wider array of STEM fields and becoming more inclusive and holistic. The gathering is based on an ethical framework of knowledge co-production built on reciprocity and relationality with an Indigenous-led planning committee and a focus on place-based knowledge of a desert ecosystem. Our aim is to expand solutions to environmental problems and healing ecosystems through two-eyed seeing –an approach of viewing the world through an Indigenous lens with one eye while the other eye sees through a Western lens, creating a more holistic and inclusive vision.This project is funded by NSF’s Eddie Bernice Johnson Inclusion across the Nation of Communities of Learners of Underrepresented Discoverers in Engineering and Science (INCLUDES) Initiative, which seeks to motivate and accelerate collaborative infrastructure building to advance and sustain systemic change to broaden participation in STEM at scale.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.

在科学，技术，工程和数学（STEM）领域中，土著学生和本地学习和知识的方式却大大不足。为了应对这一挑战，我们提出了一次面对面的聚会，以跨学科和世界观获得了解。这项提议的聚会的目的是进一步包括主动目标，即通过探索与文化相关的仿生途径来促进STEM企业更具包容性，以鼓励更多的土著学生进入STEM领域。我们认为这次聚会是多年合作的第一阶段，该合作建立了仿生，传统生态知识（TEK）和土著社区之间的协同作用。土著学生在STEM中的入学人数低，这归因于STEM在西方科学领域的独家根源，几乎没有认识到土著知识的方式，以及与他们的现场经历有限的课程联系。为了解决这种低的代表性，我们假设仿生型是模仿自然的新兴茎纪律以创建可持续的设计，可以吸引土著学生。仿生型认识到多种科学根源，许多科学根源与土著人民的传统生态知识（TEK）共享，与自然有着深切的尊重和关系。我们提出了一场聚会，在该聚会中，仿生型充当西方和土著知识之间的桥梁，为扩大对构成有效科学的构成的学术理解的途径提供了一种途径，从而使更多的土著学生参与了更广泛的STEM领域，并变得越来越包容和纯粹。该聚会是基于知识共同生产的道德框架，该框架是基于互惠和关系的，与土著人领导的计划委员会，并关注基于地位的沙漠生态系统的知识。我们的目的是通过双眼的观察来扩展解决环境问题和治愈生态系统的解决方案 - 一种通过一种眼睛观察世界的方法，而另一只眼睛通过西方镜头看到，创造了一个更整体和包容的视野。该项目由NSF的Eddie Bernice Johnson的纳入社区中的埃迪·伯尼斯·约翰逊（Eddie Bernice Johnson）包含在内旨在激励和加速协作基础设施建设以进步和维持系统的变化，以扩大STEM的大规模参与。该奖项反映了NSF的法定任务，并通过使用该基金会的知识分子的优点和更广泛的影响来评估NSF的法定任务。