The National Science Foundation has awarded $10 million to a six-state collaborative titled “Cultivating Indigenous Research Communities for Leadership in Education and STEM,” or CIRCLES, Alliance. The funding will be used to address the under-representation of American Indian and Alaska Native students in the science, technology, engineering and mathematics disciplines and in the workforce.
The award begins Aug. 15, and the North Dakota Established Program to Stimulate Competitive Research (ND EPSCoR) state office will receive $2.08 million of the total funding.
Formed in 2020 with support from NSF’s EPSCoR and Inclusion across the Nation of Communities of Learners of Underrepresented Discoverers in Engineering and Science (INCLUDES) programs, the CIRCLES Alliance is poised with this new funding to serve students and educators at the kindergarten through undergraduate levels.
The alliance builds on existing partnerships with tribal communities in Idaho, Montana, New Mexico, North Dakota, South Dakota and Wyoming.
“The CIRCLES Alliance has worked for the past two years to create a strong and mutually respectful and collaborative environment amongst the six states and between the alliance and our tribal community partners. While we are just beginning, we are excited to continue work with our tribal community partners on formal and informal activities framed around a holistic experiential and Indigenous-based approach to STEM to encourage more American Indian/Alaska Native students to think about STEM careers,” said Kelly Rusch, executive director of the ND EPSCoR state office, associate chair and professor of civil, construction and environmental engineering and NSF INCLUDES principal investigator for ND EPSCoR and NDSU.
Through the CIRCLES Alliance, the ND EPSCoR State Office in conjunction with Ryan Summers, assistant professor of science education at the University of North Dakota, will work to build on existing partnerships with tribal communities to create a network for developing and disseminating STEM educational resources, as well as implementing programming, mentorship and teacher preparation, to support student success.
The ND EPSCoR state office also will serve as the administrative backbone for the six-state alliance. “We are well positioned to use our current NATURE (Nurturing American Tribal Undergraduate Research and Education) programming as a springboard to re-think and dialogue with our tribal community partners on how we engage and encourage American Indian/Alaska Native students to pursue STEM in ways that are grounded in each student’s cultural identity,” Rusch said.
Through research and collaboration with tribal communities, the CIRCLES Alliance aims to inform educational institutions and the NSF in American Indian/Alaska Native cultural understanding and humility and to shift educational approaches.
Funding for the award comes from the NSF’s INCLUDES community.
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