AAAS’s Research Competitiveness Program (RCP) led an expert panel assessment for the University of Puerto Rico – Mayagüez (UPRM) in late January. The panel provided a summative assessment of UPRM’s Sustainable Water-Energy-Food [SusWEF] program, a collaboration on biochemical engineering that started in 2016 with the University of South Carolina.
The four-year project focused on wastewater treatment and agricultural amendments with broader impacts on graduate and undergraduate education. The project was funded under the NSF Established Program to Stimulate Competitive Research (EPSCoR) program. This was the third and final AAAS site visit for the project; the two earlier formative assessments were carried out in 2017 and 2018. RCP’s peer-to-peer, confidential reports are used by research teams in adapting their work to enhance impacts, in reporting, and in future funding applications. RCP typically joins the project at the proposal phase to assist with the development of the evaluation and assessment plan, but can also provide support after implementation is underway.