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ORIGINAL RESEARCH article

Front. Built Environ.
Sec. Earthquake Engineering
Volume 11 - 2025 | doi: 10.3389/fbuil.2025.1512507
This article is part of the Research Topic NHERI 2015-2025: A Decade of Discovery in Natural Hazards Engineering View all 4 articles

NHERI Education and Community Outreach: Longitudinal, Educational Outcomes of a Coordinated, Distributed Network

Provisionally accepted
Robin Nelson Robin Nelson *Karina I. Vielma Karina I. Vielma JoAnn Browning JoAnn Browning
  • University of Texas at San Antonio, San Antonio, United States

The final, formatted version of the article will be published soon.

    The U.S. National Science Foundation (NSF) Natural Hazards Engineering Research Infrastructure (NHERI) Network Coordination Office (NCO) Education and Community Outreach (ECO) led coordinated efforts to promote educational activities along various pathways for students and educators targeted at broadening participation in and awareness of natural hazards engineering research through the Research Experiences for Undergraduates (REU) Summer Program, the Graduate Student Council (GSC), and the Summer Institute for Early Career Researchers and K-12 Educators. NHERI connects a diverse group of undergraduate and graduate students, faculty and K-12 educators, and researchers interested in mitigating the effects of natural hazards through these flagship educational programs. After six years of implementing these integrated educational activities, longitudinal outcomes and impacts for both students and faculty have been collected and are reported in this paper. Embedded in this report are several best practices used in educational outreach for recruitment, mentoring, and engagement of diverse participants that have been evaluated and enhanced through assessment and in collaboration with the larger NHERI network. Throughout six years of leading education activities, these practices have also helped create an intentional focus on challenge areas and informed the evolution of interdisciplinary pathways for natural hazards engineering research.

    Keywords: broadening participation1, educational impacts2, NHERI3, REU4, early-career faculty5, NSF6

    Received: 16 Oct 2024; Accepted: 03 Jan 2025.

    Copyright: © 2025 Nelson, Vielma and Browning. This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (CC BY). The use, distribution or reproduction in other forums is permitted, provided the original author(s) or licensor are credited and that the original publication in this journal is cited, in accordance with accepted academic practice. No use, distribution or reproduction is permitted which does not comply with these terms.

    * Correspondence: Robin Nelson, University of Texas at San Antonio, San Antonio, United States

    Disclaimer: All claims expressed in this article are solely those of the authors and do not necessarily represent those of their affiliated organizations, or those of the publisher, the editors and the reviewers. Any product that may be evaluated in this article or claim that may be made by its manufacturer is not guaranteed or endorsed by the publisher.