Collaborative Research: EPIIC: Developing an Eco Engine Jumpstart Kit

Award ID: 2331633

This is a collaborative project across the following institutions: Benedict College (S. Carolina), Rose State College (Oklahoma), and Somerset Community College (Kentucky). These institutions (the cohort) will share strategies on how to prepare for and participate in the current industrial shift given that small colleges, representing historically underserved communities, typically suffer from a common set of infrastructure problems that hamper the institutions ability to acquire resources and adapt to innovative trends in industry and entrepreneurship. The cohort will develop and test an approach that addresses these common infrastructure problems, primarily through leveraging existing resources in new ways and collaborating with external partners in the innovative ecosystem. The results will be captured in an Eco Engine Jumpstart Kit to serve as a framework that will allow the nationwide network of Community Colleges and HBCU institutions to effectively target critical infrastructure pain points for improved engagement with the innovative ecosystem. This will enable institutions to aggregate more resources in the ecosystem, develop innovative and entrepreneurial students, and strengthen the competitiveness and viability of the institution. This project has five goals: 1) increase faculty engagement with sponsored projects, 2) increase partner engagement in sponsored projects, 3) increase student engagement in research & entrepreneurship, 4) increase capacity of sponsored projects office, and 5) develop a technology transfer process. To achieve these goals, the cohort will take an ecosystem-building approach in implementation and a scientific methodology in development. The individual institutions in the cohort have combined their knowledge of higher-education infrastructure and entrepreneurial ecosystem-building to inform their strategy on growing a community of innovation and entrepreneurship at each participating institution. In development, the project will experimentally develop and test solutions from the three original participating institutions and, once confirmed, share developed best practices with other institutions across the nation experiencing the same limitations. A mass adoption of the completed Eco Engine Jumpstart Kit can aid in creating a nationwide network of community college and HBCU higher-education institutions sharing best practices and relationships for broader impact in the innovative ecosystem. 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.

NSF Program Director: Sharon Bird