American University

Scholarship regarding U.S. governing institutions (Congress, the presidency, and the federal bureaucracy) suffers from a notoriously restricted range of theoretical, methodological, and demographic perspectives — limiting political scientists’ collective understanding of those institutions as they evolve with respect to gender, race/ethnicity, capacity, and culture. American University’s New Perspectives in Studies of American Governance program, in partnership with Purdue University, seeks to address this shortcoming. The program incentivizes emerging scholars to broaden the range of perspectives and experiences upon which they draw when pursuing insight into American governance at the federal level.

This planning grant would explore the establishment of a transparency and accountability action research and learning exchange at the School of International Service. The exchange is envisioned to bring practitioners together with researchers to deepen understanding about what works, where, and how, in the application of tools designed to make governments more responsive to citizens. Research often lags behind practice in this field, and the exchange seeks to ensure that the research agenda is driven by practitioners’ needs, while encouraging dialogue among experts across sectors.

The Project on Copyright and Open Licensing is part of the Program on Information Justice & Intellectual Property at American University Washington College of Law. With this grant, the project will work to remove real and perceived legal barriers in developing OER and to provide educational materials and technical support for the creation of OER by individuals and institutions, with a focus on copyright law and Creative Commons licensing. An intended outcome of this effort is to advance equity and inclusion in education systems by increasing access to authorship and representation of diverse perspectives in instructional materials. (Substrategy: Field Building)