CC* Team: SWEETER -- SouthWest Expertise in Expanding, Training, Education and Research
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The efficacy of an interdisciplinary research team is frequently limited by a researcher's ability to draw together a cohort of collaborators with needed scientific expertise. SWEETER: South West Expertise in Expanding Training, Education and Research is a network of resources, both training and personnel, that collaborate and foster cooperation across the boundaries of disciplines and institutions. SWEETER unites not-for-profits, community colleges, minority serving institutions, research-intensive universities, and industry from multiple states to develop this research network. The collaboration leverages expertise in several facets of computational sciences to address long-standing issues encountered in sharing resources by employing a model of resource sharing where each institution is a provider and receiver of resources. Research specialists from various sites will support domain scientists at site workshops, SWEETER annual events, and online avenues. To encourage these relationships, SWEETER offers a web-portal and shared cyberinfrastructure that will help remove resource barriers faced by community colleges and smaller institutions. SWEETER strengthens efforts for researcher preparation by offering remote and in-person training opportunities, and propagating elements of its learning environment to formal curricular efforts. Importantly, SWEETER employs an innovative evaluation strategy to assess its successes in the aspects of research, training and education. By fostering diverse partnerships developed through existing efforts, SWEETER will significantly broaden the involvement of traditionally underrepresented populations in computing at the K-12, undergraduate and graduate levels of learning. In all, SWEETER offers a flexible, portable and scalable framework to develop communities of practice that will inform the design of future research networks. 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.
