CUNY CREST HIRES Director, Dr. Shakila Merchant, along with Dr. Jackie Weissman, Director of Proposal Development, Office of Research, CCNY and Dr. Effie MacLachlan, Director of Grants, CUNY Office of Research participated and presented in the recently held 2024 Advancing Research Impact in Society (ARIS) Summit held in Omaha, Nebraska. . The 3-day Summit held during April 3-5, 2024 was co-hosted by the Louis Stokes Regional Center of Excellence for the Study of STEM Interventions (SOSI Center).
Dr. Shakila Merchant serves as the CUNY Principal Investigator (PI) of the National Science Foundation-Advancing Research Impact on Society-Broader Impacts (ARIS-BI) Toolkit, led by the PI- Dr. Janice McDonnell, Rutgers University. During the Summit, Dr. Merchant participated in several engaging activities including informative keynote speeches, discussion sessions on broader impact, private zoo-tour and award ceremony, ARIS Impact Slam, and Nebraska Science Festival Science Crawl. She also co-presented a poster at the Summit.
The Summit provided a great opportunity for participants to gain insights and share thoughts on crucial topics such as Broader Impacts in science museums, ARIS toolkit and its application across universities, strengthening community college partnerships & pathways for good jobs in the innovation economy, building trust from the inside out, communicating and assessing real-world impact of research, and many more. The first-ever ARIS Impact Slam hosted by Jocelyn Bosley; University of Nebraska included impact partnership stories from participants. In this fun-filled activity, the audience voted on the winning slammer. The event also highlighted special BI Champions and ARIS Awardees. Read more here about the activities.
Dr. Merchant, along with co-authors, Dr. Jackie Weissman and Dr. Effie MacLachlan, presented a poster titled, “Building Community of Practice and Engagement (COPE) – A CUNY BI Framework.”
Commenting on her experience of the Summit, Dr. Merchant said, “The CUNY BI-Framework initiative began in October 2022, and has helped engage many CUNY faculty and research administrators to learn and use BI toolkit as an important tool to improve their BI statements and NSF proposal development. I hope that the CUNY Broader Impact professionals continue to engage and build a community of practice, that leads them to increasing successful grant writing and increase funding and ultimately institutional research development capacity”
