HIBAR RESEARCH ALLIANCE NEWSLETTER - SEPTEMBER 2021 | An update from the HIBAR Research Alliance In this newsletter issue, we introduce our newly designated HRA Fellows and welcome three new Institutional Affiliates. We invite you to join our October 6 webinar on Rebuilding Civic Education, and catch up on other recent and upcoming events. As always, you can find additional information and resources at www.hibar-research.org. Please feel welcome to share this newsletter, or our 2-page HRA primer, with colleagues who may be interested in activities that can help universities engage more deeply with society. You can download the primer by clicking on the link below. | Congratulations to newly designated HRA Fellows The HIBAR Research Alliance Fellows program recognizes individuals who make multiple, significant, and sustained contributions to the leadership and/or development of the Alliance. Earlier this month, the HRA Governing Council conferred this designation on two highly deserving contributors: Gretchen Jordan and Lyle Schwartz. | | | Gretchen Jordan Dr. Gretchen Jordan, Principal of 360 Innovation LLC, is an independent consultant who has worked in evaluation of research and technology development programs and organizations for more than 25 years. She retired as a Principal Member of Technical Staff at Sandia National Laboratories in 2011. Recent projects include developing evaluation frameworks for an international agricultural research for development organization, a California Energy Commission technology to market program, a basic science research institute, and an alliance for health services and policy research. She was the co-editor of the journal Research Evaluation from 2008 to 2015 and she has a Ph.D. in Economics. | | | | Lyle Schwartz Dr. Lyle Schwartz is a professor in the Institute for Advanced Discovery & Innovation at the University of South Florida and retired director of the Air Force Office of Scientific Research. He was a professor of materials science and engineering at Northwestern University for 20 years and director of Northwestern’s Materials Research Center for five of those years. For the subsequent 12 years, he was director of the Materials Science and Engineering Laboratory at the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST). After NIST, he moved to the Air Force Office of Scientific Research, where, as director, he had responsibility for the entire basic research program of the Air Force. | | | We are grateful to Dr. Jordan and Dr. Schwartz for their many important and ongoing contributions toward the leadership and development of the HIBAR Research Alliance. | Welcoming our new Institutional Affiliates We warmly welcome three organizations as new HRA Institutional Affiliates: | | | Southwest Research Institute SWRI is one of the oldest and largest independent, nonprofit, applied R&D organizations in the US. Operating as a nonprofit since its 1947 inception, SWRI works in the public’s best interest and toward the betterment of humanity. | | | | Griffith University Griffith University is one of the Australia's leading and fastest-growing research universities, developing solutions that have significant social, health, environmental or economic impact. | | | | Simon Fraser University Simon Fraser University is a public research university located in British Columbia, Canada, and defined by its dynamic integration of innovative education, cutting-edge research and community engagement. | | | Interested in becoming an Institutional Member or Affiliate? All interested organizations are sincerely invited to participate in the HRA, as an Institutional Member or an Institutional Affiliate. Please contact us if you are interested in finding out more information about how your organization can join the HRA. | Join our next webinar on October 6 | Rebuilding Civic Education: How embracing complexity and controversy led to unexpected consensus Wednesday, October 6, 2021 11am-noon PT (2-3pm ET) | The constitutional democracy of the United States is in peril, and there is a widespread loss of confidence in government and civic order. Generations of students have not received the high quality education in history and civics that they need, and deserve, to prepare them for informed and engaged citizenship, and the time has come to rebuild civic education. Leaders of an inspiring and large-scale HIBAR research project, the Educating for American Democracy initiative, set out to tackle the challenge of developing a balanced, national-consensus framework and a proposed plan of action for civic and history education. In this webinar, three key participants will describe how the initiative brought together hundreds of ideologically, philosophically, and demographically diverse historians, political scientists, and educators. Together, the collaborators learned to approach disagreement and controversy as an opportunity for learning rather than as a problem to be overcome and, in doing so, they achieved much greater consensus than they had anticipated. The speakers will share their thoughts about how the lessons they learned may be applied to HIBAR research challenges in other fields. Webinar speakers: | | | Paul Carrese Founding Director, School of Civic and Economic Thought and Leadership Arizona State University | | | | Kei Kawashima-Ginsberg Director, Center for Information and Research on Civic Learning and Engagement (CIRCLE) Tufts University | | | | Tammy Waller Director of K–12 Social Studies and World Languages Arizona Department of Education | | | Supporting bold investment in collaborative research Earlier this year, the HIBAR Research Alliance issued a statement of strong support for bold investments in the collaborative research needed to address critical national and international challenges. The statement expresses enthusiastic support for two landmark bills currently under consideration by the U.S. Congress: the National Science Foundation for the Future Act and the United States Innovation and Competition Act (formerly known as the Endless Frontier Act). We are encouraged by the great potential for these new investments to enable deep research collaborations, in which expert co-leaders contribute critical understanding that spans the range from fundamental discovery to highly applied efforts. | Catch up on recent HRA events | | | Watch our June webinar: Using psychology and economics to inform & drive policy Dr. Howard Kunreuther, co-director of the Wharton Risk Management and Decision Processes Center at the University of Pennsylvania, spoke about how psychology and economics can be brought together to help society better manage low-probability, high-consequence events related to technological and natural hazards. Watch the webinar | | | | Visit our ARIS Summit poster: Enhancing the graduate student experience Elicia Maine (Simon Fraser University), Susan Porter (University of British Columbia) and Lorne Whitehead (University of British Columbia) described how enhancing the graduate student experience by accelerating collaborative research can generate a positive feedback loop. The poster was presented in a 3-minute video. Watch the video | | | Watch our AAAS panel discussion: Our 2021 AAAS Annual Meeting session featured a live panel discussion about how universities today can and should engage more deeply with the overall research and innovation ecosystem, enabling greater contributions toward solving society’s critical problems while also boosting academic excellence. Watch the panel discussion | Related reading The Code Breaker: Jennifer Doudna, Gene Editing, and the Future of the Human Race by Walter Isaacson, published by Simon and Schuster (2021) The Code Breaker offers a fascinating account of the development of the CRISPR-Cas9 gene-editing technology, an excellent example of a profound breakthrough resulting from HIBAR research. | | An upcoming related event: | National Academy of Inventors 10th Anniversary Annual Meeting The National Academy of Inventors is a member organization comprising U.S. and international universities, and governmental and non-profit research institutes, with over 4,000 individual inventor members and Fellows spanning more than 250 institutions worldwide. This year's Annual Meeting, celebrating the NAI's 10th anniversary, is a hybrid event: participants can join in person or virtually. | | | | |
