Some Suggestions for Addressing the Broader Impact Paragraph in the Project Summary
The following are some ideas for you to draw on when composing the Broader Impact paragraph in your NSF proposal. Mention those listed here that are appropriate or any others that you may think of. This is designed as a tool to stimulate thought and a guide to possible appropriate responses. In all cases, you should tailor items to your own experience and future plans.
Broader Impact Criterion: What are the broader impacts of the proposed activity?
How well does the activity advance discovery and understanding while promoting teaching, training and learning?
1) Graduate Student and Research Support Specialist training & mentoring to encourage respect for all aspects of research and to encourage and prepare them (career and professional guidance) to return to graduate school and a career in science.
2) REU program and other internship advising
a. You can mention the interactions you have and plan to have with students from the postdoc level down to the grade school level.
3) Mentoring of postdocs in the field of ecology and ecosystem science.
4) Participatory research with land managers (farmers, ranchers, gardeners), regulators, land stewards, boating groups, advocacy groups, marina operators. Here I would mention any research that involves using the resources and/or expertise that these various groups have to offer. Ex: Lyme disease research that uses the properties of area landowners tends to become a learning experience for the landowner.
5) Provide information to the Community through the Business Breakfast; publications; website; making research data available (if appropriate); seminars and the Cary Institute Newsletter. The Cary Institute Newsletter has highlighted the research that is being done by the Institute scientists and will continue to do so. This publication has wide distribution among the area lay people.
6) Collaborations with Visiting Scientists.
7) Publication of articles in scientific, peer-reviewed publications, as well as newspaper and media coverage of the research that is being conducted at the Cary Institute.
8) Course in Fundamentals of Ecosystem Ecology given at the Cary Institute draws from the research that is being conducted here.
9) The Eaton Fellowship (7 women/5 international). All received training in the Cary Institute’s Rachel Carson Analytical Laboratory.
How well does the proposal activity broaden the participation of underrepresented groups (e.g., gender, ethnicity, disability, geographic, etc.)?
1) The Research Experience for Undergraduates (REU) program with its emphasis on woman and minority recruitment. The Cary Institute has been an active participant in this program along with the ESA and the United Negro College Fund. This program is designed to make the research experience meaningful and to encourage (especially women and minorities) to pursue a career in the field of science.
a. To date the Cary Institute has had 27 minority students over a 15-year period. Total REU students to date are 144 (2002). This includes African Americans, Latino/Latinas and Native Americans.
2) Mentoring of students from underrepresented groups (Africa, South America, ex).
3) Collaborations with colleagues from South America, Africa, etc.
4) The Cary Institute has a seminar program that brings Visiting Speakers (minority, female, international) to exchange ideas and research with Cary Institute scientists.
5) International collaborations with scientists in developing nations. Example: In 2002 the Cary Institute shipped (at its own expense) cartons of duplicate scientific journals to Oscar Iribarne, a professor and researcher at the National University of Mar del Plata in Argentina.
To what extent will it enhance the infrastructure for research and education, such as facilities, instrumentation, networks and partnerships?
1) Mention any partnerships with federal agencies, state agencies, county agencies, extension agencies, land managers, universities, and other research institutes.
2) The Cary Institute has a seminar program that allows Visiting Scientists to exchange ideas, research experiences and methodology from many scientific disciplines and backgrounds with Cary Institute scientists.
3) Contribution of physical specimen to permanent collections of major museums (Smithsonian, American Museum of Natural History, NYS Museum), where they are openly available to the international scientific community.
4) Analytical lab facilities are available to research graduates, undergraduates, postdocs, international scientists. The highly qualified and competent staff of the lab provides training in the use of the lab facilities during their stay at the Cary Institute. To date it has been the training ground for well over 100 scientists during their stays at the Cary Institute.
5) Collaborative networks with national and international scholars and students.
6) When a piece of equipment becomes surplus to our needs, the Cary Institute aggressively seeks out worthy institutions to receive the equipment (Millbrook School, University of Chile, Marist College).
7) Example: Samples from National Estuarine Research Reserve are done at the Cary Institute. Collaborate with DC Environmental Council and local college.
8) Specific project research data is made available on the Cary Institute website to schools, universities and other scientists.
Will the results be disseminated broadly to enhance scientific and technological understanding?
1) Cary Institute scientists publish articles in peer-reviewed journals and will continue to do so.
2) The Cary Institute website makes research data available.
3) Fee Course – much of the course work on the Fundamentals of Ecosystem Ecology is drawn from the research that is done at the Cary Institute.
4) Cary Conference and other research conferences and workshops. If you were involved in the planning of one, you could state the title of the conference and the year and give the title of the book that emerged from the conference, if topic is pertinent to the proposal.
5) Research data sent on request or placed in permanent data repositories.
6) Direct contact with college students, K-12 students, general public (cite specifics as appropriate).
7) Talks to groups such as Trout Unlimited; National Religious Partnership on the Environment; Senate Staffers; Garden Clubs; Bard College Center for Environmental Policy, etc.
What may be the benefits of the proposed activity to society – This is your opportunity to draw a connection between the expected results of the research and how they will benefit society.
1) You can mention your service on boards, especially those of other types of groups (example: Environmental Management Council, EDF, Trout Unlimited.)
2) Better understanding of effects of human activities, leading to better management and mitigation of those effects.
3) Better understanding and appreciation for a natural world.
4) Lyme disease research has clear implications to human health by assisting our ability to avoid ticks and tick-borne infections. Demonstrates to society the strongly interconnected nature of ecological systems.
5) Better understanding of interconnection among air pollutants (acid rain and global climate change are connected) and ecosystem function.
6) Influence legislation that will protect the environment.
7) Framework to use different plants as tools to provide ecosystem services in managed landscapes and restoration.
The important thing to remember is that this is limited to a paragraph in the project summary. It should be clear, relevant, well thought-out and not exaggerated. Below are a couple of examples of well-written broader impact statements.
From an NSF program summary review narrative:
The Broader Impacts of this project were key to influencing the Program’s decision. There are two female co-PIs and two female collaborators. Two graduate students will be involved as well as one post doc and multiple undergraduates. Dr. Groffman and colleagues have cordial working relationships with scientists at CRREL, increasing their opportunities for collaborative cold season research. There are appropriate plans for broad dissemination of results including travel to meetings, publications, and websites. Finally, there is relevance to serious policy issues. One objective of the work is to link results to potential climate change scenarios. The research is also relevant to critically important forest management issues that relate to productivity and water quality. This is a study that has clearly outstanding broader impacts.
Broader Impacts Sample (Caraco, Cole, Likens proposal)
This program will provide a unique training opportunity for one graduate and two undergraduate students at the intersection of hydrology and biogeochemistry in a limnological setting. The researchers have been very active in presenting research results to the broader public and will continue to do so by promoting press conferences and media coverage through contacts established during the past several years. Scientific publications will be prepared to be useful and understandable to educators, non-scientists and policy makers such as has been done successfully by the Hubbard Brook Research Foundation Science-Links© efforts on acid rain. The researchers plan to make Mirror Lake the focus of the Science-Links© program in the near future. Local middle-school classes already use data on the Hubbard Brook Ecosystem Study web site [www.hubbardbrook.org], but researchers will help in the interaction with teachers and students and interpretation of these research data by giving tours of the research area and visits of scientists to schools. The interaction with school groups will be facilitated by the “Education Resources” site on the Hubbard Brook Ecosystem Study web page (www.hubbardbrook.org). This web site will be updated and enhanced as a result of this study. Members of the research team already give lectures and talks to continuing education classes and in numerous public fora, and will continue to do so using the findings from this research.
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