Inclusive Matching for Professional
Advancement and Career Training in Science

UIIMPACTS (Inclusive Matching for Professional Advancement and Career Training in Science) addresses the issue of social/professional integration in STEM across all training levels from high school to professional in providing a public square for dissemination, networking, professional matching and discourse across all STEM. Users of UIIMPACTS (uiimpacts.com), can post, form, moderate and participate in affinity groups, set up e-portfolios, as well as network across disciplines and career stages. User profiles can be formed for individuals, programs and institutions that include demographic information as well as stages in training, research and professional interests. A personal statement of up to 500 words can be posted as part of a user’s profile and an accompanying e-Portfolio can be populated with any work products that include videos, published or unpublished abstracts and manuscripts, as well as presentations. Any user can form groups for mentoring, research interest, professional and social and other affinity interests. Like in any other social media platform, users can post items including media within their group as well as for the general community. The platform also facilitates direct messaging between users/programs and institutions. Consider a student attending ERN or ABRCMS sharing their UIIMPACTS identification to prospective programs and institutions where others can see a full representation of that student that include their research experience, work products, level of academic accomplishments, career interests and a full personal statement. One can also consider the broader impacts of this platform in providing a mechanism for social integration and STEM related discourse for students and professionals. This platform also addresses the longstanding frustrations of institutions expressing difficulty in finding individuals from fragmented populations in STEM for training and professional recruitment.

The UIIMPACTS platform also serves as a potential point of dissemination and recruitment for programs and institutions. Institutions and programs, like individual users, can set up profiles that are searchable where they can have program information (videos, documents etc) in program e-Portfolios. Programs with premium accounts can have searchable access to the database of users to reach potential trainees and employees. Currently, there is a tool available to users that allows searches of all accredited academic and training programs listed with the Department of Education. The search engine can focus geography through selection of city and state. This can be very useful for stunts and professional looking of institutions that have programs that cover Theo professional and training interests. There are other tools in development, including career exploration through aligning lifestyle, work values and work activities with STEM occupations. This tool will provide among many types of information: median salaries and employment projections, certifications, skills, knowledge areas, surveys of those currently employed, and other supporting information as well as videos and training related information individual to each occupation.