Appendix A
Charge to the Planning Group
A workshop will be held that will assist principal investigators in the NSF’s Biocomplexity initiative and other scientists who are required to integrate education with research and to communicate and to educate the public more effectively about the nature and significance of their research. Scientists and educators with expertise in fields related to the environment or biocomplexity who have successfully integrated education or outreach components with their research will be invited to give formal presentations about those experiences. They will be asked to describe how they were successful in integrating educational improvement or outreach with their research, and to discuss various approaches to integrating education and research. They will comment on successful ways that principal investigators can design projects where the integration of education and research is an expected outcome of scientific work. The workshop will also include participants in the NSF Biocomplexity grant competition, which requires grantees to incorporate education components into their research. The grantees will learn from the other invited participants and help shape the discussion topics and focus of the workshop. A workshop summary will be prepared describing the discussions that take place at the meeting. These descriptions of projects will serve as examples for investigators in the NSF Biocomplexity Program and many other researchers who must design and implement educational components of a research project.
