Description

• The Distributed Graduate Seminars program is designed to allow 6-8 universities from any country to simultaneously conduct graduate seminar courses on the same topic.
• The course will be preceded by an organizational meeting of the scientific leaders from each institution, either at NCEAS or by teleconference, during which questions and parameters to be addressed will be determined and course logistics will be finalized.
• Each seminar leader will teach the seminar course in-person at his or her own institution. Students in each of the seminar courses at the participating institutions will analyze the issue at hand (e.g., invasive species, global change, ecosystem services, predator-prey dynamics), using data and information from the local area or region.
• After the seminar is completed, two (2) students from each university and their scientific leader will be invited to NCEAS to conduct a "grand synthesis", analyzing and comparing patterns and results from the various locations.
• Students in each group will interact over the web during the course of the seminar to exchange questions, issues, approaches, and data resulting from their separate investigations. NCEAS will provide and manage the web-based collaborative spaces (e.g., multi-user data entry portals).
• The students benefit from the scholarly activity of the seminar, from networking with colleagues, and from learning information management tools. Seminar leaders benefit from the opportunity to collaborate with their colleagues at widely distributed universities while engaging in meaningful and creative pedagogy at their home institutions. Previous Distributed Graduate Seminars have resulted in multiple publications authored by students and faculty, attention from the national and local media, and databases that can be accessed by the public on the NCEAS website.
• Approximately 25% of the participating institutions are expected to be institutions serving high proportions of groups underrepresented in science.
• Proposals may originate from or include undergraduate institutions.
• NCEAS funds two (2) DGS groups each year, generally one proposal per submission date.
  
• During proposal development PIs are encouraged to contact:
  
  Deputy Director Stephanie Hampton
  hampton@nceas.ucsb.edu
  805-892-2505
  

Financial Information

NCEAS provides travel, lodging and per diem expenses for the organizational meeting and the final synthetic meeting. In addition, NCEAS will provide up to $1,000 per institution in discretionary funds to support course activities such as telephone use, photocopying or additional travel (e.g., for student travel to collect information). NCEAS will provide and manage the web-based collaborative spaces (e.g., multi-user data entry portals).

It is not necessary to submit a budget in proposals for Distributed Graduate Seminars.