ADVANCING THE CUNY ENGINE

ADVANCING CUNY'S NATIONAL AND GLOBAL FOOTPRINT IN RESEARCH & EDUCATION IN EMERGING TECHNOLOGIES THROUGH THE UNITED STATES NATIONAL SCIENCE FOUNDATION’S ADVANCED TECHNOLOGICAL EDUCATION PROGRAM [NSF-ATE 2017-2023]

?We just concluded the ‘Pathways to Geospatial Technology and Careers’ (PGTC 2017-2023) funded by the United States National Science Foundation’s Advanced Technological Education program (NSF-ATE) an important vehicle to build America’s human capital in emerging technologies. Our immersive and collaborative efforts with York college, the Bronx Community College Geospatial Center of the CUNY CREST Institute (BGCCCI) and proactive engagements with an Industry consortium and other stakeholders has yielded many significant outcomes. There were new CUNY pathway courses that had high enrollments, an industry vetted certificate program in geospatial technology (CPGT) that was unanimously approved the college wide curriculum committee, across country research internships, all year-round inquiry based hands-on workshops for participants from the K-16 educational system. Our professional development programs for educators from schools and universities provided training in geospatial analyses, capacity building with open-source software and datasets that has empowered cohorts of teachers and professors at universities to initiate projects at their respective institutions.

Our outreach expanded instead of shrinking during COVID-19 due to the design, implementation of a well-tested and robust innovative virtual cloud-based model in collaboration with Amazon Web Services [AWS] and when universities were struggling to enroll students, we had overwhelming response by participants to enroll in our workshops and research internships. The inquiry-based learning materials created at BGCCCI drove the pedagogy that fostered spatial thinking in our workshops and professional development programs. The place-based hands-on exercises using industry standard and opensource software enhanced conceptual and spatial analytical soft skills. The workforce skills acquired by over 350 participants have created career pathways and or impacted participants to use the skills in their higher education or professions. The joint NSF-ATE & NASA-MISTC activities that we hosted underlines the importance and value of jointly delivering two separately funded federal programs that had the same over-arching national goals. The research internships led to technical reports and projects that promoted convergent thinking and a multi-disciplinary approach to solve real-world issues. Our expert mentors guided the interns by using a well-structured internship workflow that was bult on an edifice of constant engagement with the interns resulting in a transformative experience for all the interns. The internships resulted in a detailed technical report, manuscripts some of which were co-authored and published with the interns in high impact peer-reviewed book chapters and articles including Springer Nature. Our collective efforts were characterized by significant contributions and teamwork from an Industry consortium, CUNY K-16, Bronx Collaborative Center, NASA – Goddard Flight Center, universities and schools, Grants office, Office of academic affairs, CUNY Research Foundation, international collaborators, administrators, parents and most importantly participants who showed tremendous patience, character, and attitude in completing all tasks.

We are grateful to CUNY, the NSF-ATE directorate, CUNY grants office, Research Foundation of CUNY, representatives from an industry consortium, BCC office of academic affairs, NASA, counsellors from schools, parents and many others who participated and contributed to our success in a proactive manner. We converted many challenges into opportunities and by delivering a combination of high-end scholarly all year-round activities we demonstrated that only by education, research and training we can create career pathways leading to upward social mobility. The cutting-edge research (technical reports, publications, and innovations in the cloud) has expanded footprint of the CUNY’s research enterprise, and most importantly created career pathways for participants from underrepresented communities.

To learn more about our efforts visit the BGCCCI website.

https://www.geospatialcentercunycrestinstitute.com/

PGTC [PIs] – Drs. Sunil Bhaskaran and Ratan Dhar

Acknowledgments: Student and faculty participants from the k-16 system in New York City, CUNY-York College, CUNY-BCC, CUNY-Medgar Evers College, Research foundation of CUNY, Industry consortium, international partners, United States NSF-ATE and NASA-MISTC directorates, CUNY K-16 Initiative, parents, counsellors, and many others.?A special thanks to my family who put up with my late hours and were very understanding.