Open AccessFaculty and Student Teams and National Laboratories: Expanding the Reach of Research Opportunities and Workforce Development
Author(s) -
N. Blackburn,
Karen White,
M Stegman
Publication year - 2009
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Reports
DOI - 10.2172/964728
Subject(s) - workforce , medical education , national laboratory , curriculum , institution , publication , undergraduate research , public relations , political science , engineering , engineering ethics , sociology , pedagogy , medicine , engineering physics , law
The Faculty and Student Teams (FaST) Program, a cooperative effort between the US Department of Energy (DOE) Office of Science and the National Science Foundation (NSF), brings together collaborative research teams composed of a researcher at Brookhaven National Laboratory, and a faculty member with two or three undergraduate students from a college or university. Begun by the Department of Energy in 2000 with the primary goal of building research capacity at a faculty member's home institution, the FaST Program focuses its recruiting efforts on faculty from colleges and universities with limited research facilities and those institutions that serve populations under-represented in the fields of science, engineering and technology, particularly women and minorities. Once assembled, a FaST team spends a summer engaged in hands-on research working alongside a laboratory scientist. This intensely collaborative environment fosters sustainable relationships between the faulty members and BNL that allow faculty members and their BNL colleagues to submit joint proposals to federal agencies, publish papers in peer-reviewed journals, reform local curriculum, and develop new or expand existing research labs at their home institutions