At the University Libraries, Research and Information Management Services (RIMS) brings together information about scholarship, creative practices, and funded research endeavors, as well as teaching, service, awards, and leadership accomplishments, throughout Carnegie Mellon. The RIMS team, led by Program Director Jason Glenn, is leading the effort to compile faculty information, simplify assessment and documentation, and streamline collaboration across different departments and disciplines.
Richelle Bernazzoli, director of the Office of Undergraduate Research and Scholar Development (OURSD), first reached out to the RIMS team for help tracking the institutions where CMU faculty studied and worked throughout their careers in 2022. In the years since then, the data analysis dashboards created by RIMS have enabled CMU students to more easily identify mentors and research opportunities tailored for their fields and interests — including an alumna who was recently named a Fulbright Scholar.
Goal
- Maintain a support pipeline to guide students applying for prestigious international fellowships and work experiences by tracking faculty data across CMU.
How We Helped
- RIMS Data Analyst Andrey Chang led efforts to develop faculty education and work history dashboards. These dashboards visualize the institutions where CMU faculty have studied and worked, plotting them on a world map.
- OURSD uses these dashboards to help identify faculty members to act as mentors and join committees to guide students in the application process for prestigious scholarships and fellowships.
Results
- CMU alumna and former RIMS undergraduate programmer Kristin Daniel, who graduated from the College of Engineering in 2023, sought guidance from OURSD when applying for a Fulbright scholarship. Initially, staff at OURSD advised Daniel one-on-one and reviewed drafts of her application essays.
- Once Daniel was further along in the application process, OURSD staff used the dashboards created by the RIMS team to identify appropriate faculty and staff to serve on her Fulbright committee — to help interview her and assess her application before the national Fulbright deadline. Since Daniel was applying for a Fulbright grant that would fund graduate studies at a university in the UK, they selected individuals with experience in the UK to serve on her committee. The committee was able to give her specialized feedback on how to improve her application before submitting.
- Daniel was selected as a grant recipient for the U.S. Fulbright Student Program's 2024-25 competition cycle. Her work, driven to improve equitable access to health care, looks at social determinants of health and other economic impacts that affect preeclampsia, a complication that can occur during pregnancy.
Feature image by Andrew Neel on Unsplash