Respectful and Responsible Broader Impacts: Meaningful Community Engagement in Federal Grant Projects

Featuring guest speaker, Dr. Rebecca Shearman, Program Director, Directorate for Technology, Innovation and Partnerships (TIP), Division of Innovation and Technology Ecosystems (ITE), Innovation Programs Section

Increasingly, federal grants (especially from NSF) are requiring university-based researchers, faculty, and principal investigators (PIs) to invite community members into the overall grant project to help ensure that there is a strong connection between community-identified needs and the research process. Given that this is a major shift, and that many professors have not been trained on how to engage the community, there is a gap emerging in practice. Faculty are expected to find community partners, but it is not clear the quality of these connections. An emerging group of community engagement professionals on campuses have been leveraged to help faculty and PIs find community partners, but it sometimes is an after-thought and reflects a haphazard attempt to tack on community partners who were not a part of shaping the proposal.

This workshop seeks to answer the question: How can community partners more meaningfully be engaged in federal grant proposals that require community engagement? Becky Shearman, Program Director for NSF's Directorate for Technology, Innovation and Partnerships will lead a discussion about how to make partnerships meaningful, respectful, and responsible. Drawing on her experience as a faculty member and an NSF Program Director, she will offer thoughts on how this work can successfully be done.

About the guest speaker: Dr. Rebecca Shearman is a program director at the U.S. National Science Foundation (NSF), where she oversees a portfolio of initiatives aimed at advancing technological innovation, in workforce development in areas critical to national and global interests. Included in her portfolio is the NSF Regional Innovation Engines program, which catalyzes innovation ecosystems across the United States by fostering economic growth and technological advancement at the regional level. The Engines support partnerships among academia, industry, government, and non- profit organizations to drive regional economic development, create high-wage jobs, and enhance the nation’s global competitiveness.

Dr. Shearman stood up the NSF EPIIC (Enhancing Partnerships in Inclusive and Innovative Communities) program, which focuses on capacity building initiatives at non-R1/R2 universities (including minority-serving institutions and community colleges), to enable inclusive partnerships among diverse stakeholders to promote innovation and economic development. Additionally, Dr. Shearman co-created the NSF ExLENT (Experiential Learning for Emerging and Novel Technologies) program, which provide inclusive experiential learning opportunities to diverse individuals, enhancing their skills and access to career pathways in emerging technology fields.

Before her tenure at NSF, Dr. Shearman was an associate professor at Framingham State University, where she taught and mentored research students in the biological sciences. Her academic research focused on investigating the molecular mechanisms underlying cell differentiation and development of the musculoskeletal system of vertebrates.

Dr. Shearman earned her Ph.D. in Biological Sciences from the University of Chicago and a Bachelor of Art in Biology at Franklin and Marshall College.