Leadership

Engaging Community through Science

Covid-response collaborative blends data science with community wisdom

Leaders in masks by Old Well.

Covid-response collaborative blends data science with community wisdom

A new program, I4 Boundary Spanners, launched in summer 2020 to engage North Carolina communities through data science, public policy and service to address community-specific needs during the COVID-19 pandemic.

Sponsored by the UNC Graduate School, Southern Futures Initiative and the North Carolina Policy Collaboratory, this program strives to train a diverse group of Carolina graduate students as I4 Boundary Spanners: students who appreciate and can mobilize the dataverse to empower their communities to include, identify, investigate and influence (the four Is) around issues that impact their physical, environmental and economic health.

“I4 Boundary Spanners is all about the synergies built from conversations, which underscores what the NC Policy Collaboratory strives to be,” said Jeff Warren, executive director of the North Carolina Policy Collaboratory and adjunct associate professor of geological sciences. “I love talking to legislators about the power that can be harnessed across the UNC System, working together across disciplines. That’s really important and what’s been missing from a lot of physical science research…the people quotient.”

Read the complete Carolina Story to learn more about this program…Opens in new window

The Graduate School Funding Priorities

    Readers Also Viewed...

    Student Support

    Revered Saints and Ritual Death

    Uncovering reverence in the fourth to sixth centuries to improve contemporary cultural understanding

    Two students work in the field
    Research

    Crouching Researcher, Hidden Sparrow

    Remote fieldwork in the Colorado mountains provides amazing research experiences

    This year's class of Weiss Fellows stand on the steps of the Graduate Center
    Student Support

    Weiss Urban Livability Fellows

    The Weiss Urban Livability Fellowship supports graduate students and their community projects in Chapel Hill

    Students and faculty collaborate
    Student Support

    Collaborating for the Global Good

    Promoting collaboration across the world to combat misinformation

    Portrait of Courtney Chaaban
    Student Support

    Analyzing Adolescent ACLs

    Summer Research Fellowship allows doctoral candidate to work with teens on ACL injuries

    A portrait of John Wadden
    Donor

    Empowering clinical psychology graduate students

    Two new awards will support and recognize graduate students’ research