Workshop for Engaging Social, Behavioral, and Economic Scientists through Social and Policy Entrepreneurship

Additional Information:
http://www.nsf.gov/pubs/2013/nsf13046/nsf13046.jsp?WT.mc_id=USNSF_25&WT.mc_ev=click

Description:
Building on the National Science Foundation's commitment to increasing the broader impacts of its science, the Directorate for Social, Behavioral, and Economic Sciences (SBE) seeks to explore possible avenues for guiding scientific discoveries closer to the development of public policy and social ventures. To this end, SBE would like to invite proposals for organizing interdisciplinary, multi-sector workshops that focus on (but are not limited to) the following topics and issues:

• What is the nature of the system within which scientific knowledge is transformed into public policy or social action? What interactions characterize this system? What system failures or barriers impede the utilization of non-commercial science by governments, non-profit organizations, community groups, and other social ventures? How can universities and scholars best serve this system?
• What non-commercial pathways best connect academic science to public policy and management and to social ventures designed to meet public needs? What types of interactions with scientists are most fruitful in these contexts?
• How should scholars, social entrepreneurs, policy-makers, and administrators engage each other to facilitate better application of SBE science?
• What skill sets and partnerships do scientists need to develop in order to optimize the transformation of their science into actionable and useful knowledge in the non-commercial contexts of public policy, management, and social need?
• What types of curricula or educational activities should be developed to advance knowledge in the area of social and policy entrepreneurship?

Ideally, the reports generated by these workshops could be used by a variety of audiences as starting points for the development of a curriculum or a specific set of activities designed to facilitate the transformation of fundamental SBE science into actionable knowledge.