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Broader Impact Resources

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Broader Impact Professional Development @ VIMS
VIMS Broader Impact practitioners provide a variety of professional development opportunities for VIMS faculty, staff and graduate students. The current offering are listed below. If you'd like to participate in any of these opportunities, please contact Lisa Lawrence (ayers@vims.edu).

  • One-on-one consultations to help scientists design the broader impact component of their research. These may include assistance with a broader impact personal statement, identification of community stakeholders, and development of broader activities. 
  • Broader Impacts 101 Workshop which helps researchers gain a better understanding of what are broader impacts, how to develop and implement broader impact activities and where to find resources and support.
  • Broader Impacts Identity Workshop which helps scientists, especially graduate students and early-career scientists, identify their broader impact goals and how to begin development of a plan to accomplish those goals.

Broader Impacts Toolkit
The following BI planning resources were designed to help researchers develop effective Broader Impact plans for their NSF proposals. But, these tools can be used for any research proposal that incorporates broader or research impact elements. The toolkit was developed by the the Center for Advancing Research Impact in Society (ARIS) and Rutgers University.

  • Broader Impact Plan Elements
    Totally new to planning Broader Impact? Then start here. The Broader Impact Plan Elements section of the BI toolkit will help you become familiar with the various elements of a BI plan and provides worksheets to help think through the sections which include:
    • Finding partners
    • Target audience
    • Costs
    • Relevancy
    • Evaluation
  • Broader Impact Wizard
    If you already have some familiarity with BI Planning, this wizard will help you develop a BI plan by taking you through the following 4 steps. Upon completion of the wizard, you will get a summary plan that you can save to continue developing the plan for your proposal. This tool is part of the Broader Impact Toolkit 
    1. What do you want to do?
    2. Who will you engage?
    3. How will you do it?
    4. How will you know you've done it?
  • Broader Impact Checklist
    After you've created your BI plan, use this checklist to check off the items you have addressed in your plan. Then, review the items you have not addressed, and consider adding text to your proposal to address them.
  • Broader Impact Rubric
    After you've created a BI plan and checked it against the BI Checklist, use this rubric to help assess your project's potential.