Discipline: Technology & Engineering
Subcategory: STEM Research
Kerry Howe - University of New Mexico
The CREST Center for Water and the Environment (CWE) at the University of New Mexico is completing a Phase I award and starting a Phase II award. This poster will highlight the successes of the center over the last 5 years and the plans for the next 5 years. The Phase I CREST award greatly expanded the capacity for water-related research at UNM, provided research funding for over 90 participants who generated more than 140 publications, presentations, and theses and conducted outreach about STEM to thousands of participants during visits to local K-12 schools, public events, and professional conferences using custom-designed outreach activities built by our students. The Phase II award will build on those successes while expanding and redirecting the water-related research with new research questions, new partnerships with URM-supporting institutions, and a new emphasis on recruiting and retaining Native American students, a population that may be underrepresented even among CREST centers. The Phase II CWE has three interrelated subprojects that focus on hydrologic processes in watersheds, water quality and treatment, and coupled water-energy interactions. The unifying research theme that connects these subprojects and meets the center objectives is the protection and restoration of water quality for downstream and rural communities, which is particularly critical in the arid southwestern US where limited water resources are essential for people’s sustenance and livelihood and where the rural communities often contain high minority populations. The CWE will expand the outreach activities with a new outreach coordinator and connections to Native American communities and organizations, increase focus on citizen science, start new visiting scholar and visiting lecturer programs, fund seed grants to encourage university-wide participation in the center, collaborate with external organizations including NSF Engineering Research Centers, and develop curriculum and activities that meet New Mexico’s new STEM Ready! Science Standards.
Funder Acknowledgement(s): National Science Foundation, Award HRD-1345169
Faculty Advisor: None Listed,
NSF Affiliation: CREST