In the evolving landscape of transdisciplinary research within American higher education institutions, fostering collaborations between Research 1 (R1) institutions and Minority Serving Institutions (MSI), particularly Emerging Research Institutions (ERI), presents unique opportunities that can yield impressive results. However, developing these partnerships synergistically, while also navigating the realities of the current political climate, comes with challenges. This presentation will explore the benefits, challenges, and strategies for successful teaming with researchers from MSIs and ERIs. The presenter, Darius Melvin, has created a successful framework for the development and ongoing maintenance of such partnerships, utilizing several principles that overlap, and build upon, foundational team science concepts.

In the United States, there are over 700 institutions designated as Minority Serving, meaning they enroll a significant percentage of racially minoritized students. These designations include Historically Black Colleges and Universities (HBCUs), Hispanic-Serving Institutions (HSIs), Tribal Colleges and Universities (TCUs), and Asian American and Native American Pacific Islander-Serving Institutions (AANAPISIs), among others (Espinoza, 2024). The amount of these institutions, and the diversity of them, have grown significantly over the past decade (Espinoza, 2024). Research collaborations with MSIs can foster innovation, yield enhanced productivity and are essential for increasing research capacity nationally and future researchers (Leyte Winfield, 2024). One of the main tenets of team composition is team diversity (Nancy J. Cooke, 2015) and better ideas, which betters science, can be partially contributed to this broader participation of researchers. Partnering with MSIs can not only bring these benefits but also additional trained scholars with unique perspectives.

However, team composition is also one of the greatest ongoing challenges to effective team science (Nancy J. Cooke, 2015). Particularly challenging can be the development of healthy, synergistic partnerships with MSIs. All universities and colleges maintain their own varieties of campus culture, tenets and values. However, MSIs are especially unique due to the range of contexts and missions that these institutions have (Gosha, Morreale, Washington, 2025; Leyte Winfield, 2024). Despite funding disparities, historically adverse policies and lower research profiles, MSIs have achieved high levels of research productivity (Curry, Bonner, Stubbs, & Payne, 2023). For R1 institutions to team effectively with MSIs, the team environment must be adaptable enough to support and align with the needs and interests of their ERI partners (Leyte Winfield, 2024). But since there’s not a one-size-fits-all strategy, what’s the best way for large, R1-led teams to approach these partnerships?

In this talk, Melvin will provide a case study of the Center for Research on Programmable Plant Systems (CROPPS), a National Science Foundation Science & Technology Center hosted at Cornell University, to discuss its approach to excellence in team science, with a heavy emphasis on developing its team composition with the inclusion of MSIs; namely Tuskegee University, an 1890 land-grant HBCU, as a full partner in the center. CROPPS will discuss its approach to building synergistic partnerships with MSIs, its connection to team science and the ongoing challenges and successes of their partnerships. The goal is for audience members to identify key steps in developing a unique approach suitable for their team and build synergistic research collaborations.