Virtual Mentoring Institute: Practical Strategies for Inclusive Mentoring in Undergraduate Research for the Nevada System of Higher Education (NSHE)

November 8-10, 2021
1:00-2:30 PM PDT

This year’s NSHE Mentoring Institute: Practical Strategies for Inclusive Mentoring in Undergraduate Research is an interactive virtual workshop series for NSHE faculty, program administrators and students at all levels, who mentor others, particularly in STEM research.

Hosted by NSHE Sponsored Programs Office & EPSCoR and the Council on Undergraduate Research (CUR), Practical Strategies sessions will:

• Explore salient/best-practices in research mentoring;
• Discuss the value of “tiered-peer mentoring” and the effectiveness of enabling students as mentors; and
• Discover strategies that foster equity and inclusion of diverse populations in research mentoring.

This is the second annual Mentoring Institute hosted by NSHE and CUR, designed to provide resources, infrastructure and connectivity, to support research and workforce development in STEM.  It’s important for each NSHE institution to have representatives in attendance who are willing and able to further foster research mentoring within their programs, departments and/or institutions. Administrative, faculty and student representation from each NSHE campus is ideal as individualized/team working sessions will be held.

Please register by Friday, November 5, 2021. All participants agree to fully participate in all sessions of the series, as well as the individual group sessions and pre-/post assessments.

See the recent news for the NSF and NASA EPSCoR programs.

See the recent news for the NSF and NASA EPSCoR programs.

See the recent news for the NSF and NASA EPSCoR programs.

See the recent news for the NSF and NASA EPSCoR programs.

See the recent news for the NSF and NASA EPSCoR programs.

See the recent news for the NSF and NASA EPSCoR programs.

See the recent news for the NSF and NASA EPSCoR programs.

The 2019 Nevada Space Grant and NASA EPSCoR Statewide Meeting will be held April 26, 2019 at the University of Nevada, Reno. The Statewide Meeting will include oral and poster presentations featuring research results of Nevada NASA EPSCoR and Nevada NASA Space Grant funded projects. Registration is required by April 15, 2019.

See the recent news for the NSF and NASA EPSCoR programs.

Nevada NSF EPSCoR announces the new Project Director, Dr. Frederick C. Harris, Jr. Following an internal statewide NSHE search, the Research Affairs Council along with Vice Chancellor Constance Brooks approved the appointment of Dr. Harris, who will take on the role of Project Director while continuing his work at the University of Nevada, Reno, where he is a Professor in the Department of Computer Science and Engineering.

As the Project Director, Dr. Harris will lead the current National Science Foundation (NSF) Established Program to Stimulate Competitive Research (EPSCoR) Track-1 (NEXUS) project. In addition, he will serve as lead Principal Investigator (PI) on the new proposal that is under development for the next cycle of Track-1 (2020-2025) funding. The current Track-1 project began in June 2013, as a five-year cooperative agreement with an annual renewal process and has been extended through 2019. The total award is $20 million with a state match requirement of $4 million.

Dr. Harris has extensive experience with NSF EPSCoR. He has been part of three Track-1 projects and two Track-2 projects. His leadership positions in these projects have helped him understand the purpose and structure of the EPSCoR programs and enabled him to collaborate with researchers across the state and the western United States. He has also represented Nevada’s Track-1 program at various national meetings and has been invited on multiple occasions to travel to Washington D.C. to present on his research and the state EPSCoR goals at NSF and the U.S. Senate.

He received his PhD in Computer Science from Clemson University. He has been involved as PI, Co-PI, and Senior Personnel on grants from NSF, NASA, ONR, DOD, and DARPA, totaling more than $50 million. He has over 50 journal publications and more than 180 full paper peer refereed conference publications, collaborating with over 300 co-authors. Dr. Harris has led collaborative research efforts throughout his career and looks forward to increasing this type of research across our state as the new NSF EPSCoR Project Director.

Multiple regulatory inputs control type three secretion in the bacterial pathogen Shigella flexneri. The goal of this project is to understand transcriptional regulation used by the bacterial pathogen, Shigella flexneri, to control the secretion of effector proteins via the type three secretion system (T3SS) needle. This analysis is important because many bacterial pathogens use the T3SS to inject effector proteins into a human host cell to cause disease. Despite rigorous attempts to maintain a clean room for spacecraft assembly, Shigella flexneri and other bacterial pathogens have been found in air samples obtained at the Johnson Space Center. I hope that my findings can be used to develop novel therapeutics and/or a more effective live-attenuated S. flexneri vaccine.
This project peaked my interest in how bacterial pathogens respond to external signals found within the host environment. The NASA funding provided me with the rare opportunity to focus solely on my research. Altogether, this experience has reinforced my drive to continue academic research pursuits after I graduate.