News Article

iUTAH is excited for its upcoming Spring All-Hands Meeting to be held on Friday, March 31 at the University of Utah in Salt Lake City. In building on past successful collaborations, we are partnering with the Office of the Vice President for Research at the U to provide a full-day forum and series of workshops for an in-depth look at integrating broader impacts into academic research activities. In the morning, a series of panelists and keynote speakers, representing both local and nationally renowned practitioners of broader impacts as well as engaged scholars from different areas of academia, will share their thoughts and approaches on science outreach and engagement working with, among others, K-12, citizen scientists, and under-represented minorities.

The afternoon workshops, led by many of the morning speakers, will be open to iUTAH participants, as well as faculty and students from universities and colleges from across the state. It will be especially helpful to those individuals looking to add strong broader impacts components into research proposals. In addition to workshops focused on career grant proposals and doctoral dissertation improvement grants, we anticipate adding workshops with topics ranging from K-12 to citizen science and beyond.

Pre-registration is required to attend, as we expect the event to fill quickly. Please watch our website for details on how to register, which starts in February 2017. There is no cost for the forum. Afternoon workshops will be interactive, and will include submission of a proposal, proposal idea, or call for proposals that a participant is working on. Workshop facilitators will select two submissions to be used as case studies for presentation and discussion during the workshop. Working in small groups, participants will receive feedback from workshop facilitators and other participants. "Learning by example" should engage and enhance all participants’ experience in the hands-on activity.

Our goal is to train as many as 80 researchers and doctoral students in these workshops. We are confident that this will be a productive and enriching event that will further iUTAH's goal of advancing the STEM research enterprise in our state.