What are our core values?

The university self-inventory begins by identifying the core values of relevant BI stakeholders, including:

• Research sponsor/funding agencies
• Offices of Research Development, Engagement, Outreach and Extension
• Individual researchers or research groups/centers
• The researcher’s college, department, field, directorate

Review vision and mission statements, strategic plans, and annual reports of institutional stakeholders to help clarify core values.

• What are the key values, motivations, and aspirations of each stakeholder?
• Where are investments in resources being made, and what initiatives do these investments aim to advance?
• Individual researchers or research’s college, department, field, directorate.

When working with individual researchers, provide them with opportunities to learn about and reflect on the core values of the stakeholders, and to consider where these values most clearly align and diverge.

What are our strengths?

Conduct an inventory of the BI-related strengths and expertise on your campus.

• Are there existing efforts on campus that connect to community organizations, or professional development opportunities for researchers to learn more about diversity, gender, science literacy, and communications?
• Does your university have robust K-12 outreach programs, research experience for undergraduates, career development, or public service departments that researchers could connect to? What do faculty need to know to participate?
• Does your university have expertise in grant proposal development and broader impacts design? How do these activities support researcher projects?Identify these assets and outline the pathways, resources, and supports required to connect faculty to them as they develop their broader impacts program ideas.

What are our internal resources?

Most universities have resources to support faculty in a wide range of activities that align with their key values and mission. The inventory activity above encourages you to develop a list of existing offices, programs, and people that support researchers in the following areas:

• Research Development and Sponsored Programs*
• Community Engagement
• STEM Outreach
• Teaching and Learning
• Diversity
• Extension and land Grant Affairs
• Communications
• Evaluations
• Industry
• Community Relations

Creating pathways for researchers involves building relationships with a variety of organizational leaders across your institution and understanding their capacity and interests to support researchers in Broader Impacts.

*Offices of Research Development, Sponsored Programs, and STEM outreach often assist researchers in developing BI. They may provide professional development around BI to faculty and grant administrators. They likely have resources and access to networks of the grant panel reviewers, and successful grants recipients, and examples of successful proposals and program models that faculty can learn from. Nationally the NORDP National Organization of Research Development Professionals) group is supportive of research development professionals.

What are our external resources?

There are many external resources available to researchers both locally and nationally but knowing whom to connect to and how is a common barrier in engaging external resources. Additionally, many external BI programs seem to develop from individual relationships, a friend, neighbor, or child’s teacher, and without clear institutional relationships or plans for longevity. To create institutional relationships with external resources that withstand individual change, efforts to develop a common language around BI is important. Identifying shared values for BI work is also important.

Where to begin:

• What ISEs exist in your community and what might they need to know in order to collaborate with researchers from your university on broader impacts?
• Based on the knowledge of the researchers you work with, what characteristics and knowledge should an ISE possess to work effectively in BI?
• Are there existing university initiatives that connect to local ISEs? How might you leverage those resources to support outreach to local ISEs to share opportunities and perhaps offer professional development or conversations around BI?
• If you have existing relationships with ISEs, what opportunities exist to improve relationships so that the values and needs of all the BI stakeholders are considered?

Reaching out:

Many ISEs desire to work with STEM researchers and have existing programs and opportunities that well-matched researchers can collaborate on for BI. Yet not all ISEs and external resources understand BI from the point of view of university stakeholders.

• How might you begin to reach out to ISEs?
• How might you approach an ISEs with a sense of building common ground, reciprocity, and mutual benefit in mind. Envisioning and discussing the benefits of long-term partnerships is key for everyone involved.

Other External Resources for Research Adinistrators to Support BI:

• External Program Evaluators
• ARIS: Center for Advancing Research Impact in Society
• AAAS: American Association for the Advancement of Science
• The Engagement Scholarship Consortium
• National Science Foundation Grants Conferences

What are the desired (audience) impacts of our project?

Think about the desired impacts you would like to have on the researchers you support and the ISEs you connect them too. Articulating the kinds of impact, you hope to have in working with faculty will allow you to work strategically. Some goals might be the following:

• Create processes and long-term relationships that facilitate researcher BI
• Ensure that the university make these available to all faculty
• Create a network of internal and external organizations that speak the same BI language
• Produce resources and systems that make BI less intimidating to researchers
• Enable faculty to enrich the communities they work in• Support faculty and ISEs in utilizing existing resources to disseminate and celebrate their BI work

Where do we want to go?

Consider how successful BI programs can contribute to your long-term institutional goals. How can we align both researchers and ISE partners around the larger institutional stakeholder priorities, and lower barriers to collaboration through common BI language?