Your STEM partnership doesn't need to start from scratch

There's a moment most STEM faculty know well.

The broader impacts section is due in three weeks. You need to describe meaningful community partnerships — ones that demonstrate real infrastructure and real collaboration. You're staring at a blank page.

So you Google "partnership examples NSF." You borrow language from a colleague's funded proposal. You describe partnerships that sound plausible. And you hope reviewers don't notice the plan has no substance behind it.

This isn't a knowledge problem. It's a professional development gap. Nobody teaches faculty how to build STEM partnerships the way nobody teaches them how to write grants — you're supposed to absorb it through proximity and trial.

The cost shows up in partnerships that stall after year one. Evaluation plans bolted on as afterthoughts. Collaboration sections that read like wishlists rather than plans.

That's what Team Guides are built to fix.

Team Guides are 8 self-paced professional development packages — story-driven newsletter series, interactive tools, downloadable resources, and workshop materials for faculty and staff who design STEM partnerships.

Built from evaluating 4 EPIIC institutions and doctoral research on how faculty actually build and sustain STEM partnerships. The tools are field-tested, not theoretical.

Each guide covers a specific phase of the full partnership development cycle. You can follow the sequence or jump to what you need right now.

Story Stacks (free) — Impact identity. Who are you as a researcher, and what do you actually care about? The through-line that connects your research, your teaching, and your partnership work.

Partnership Idea Sparks — What real STEM partnerships look like. 20+ concrete examples across 7 sectors. No more staring at the page wondering what a policy partnership actually involves.

Partnership Best Practices — What separates partnerships that work from partnerships that look good on paper. Asset-first design, mutual benefit, and what to do when things go sideways.

Participatory Evaluation for Researchers — Building evaluation into your activities so it doesn't feel bolted on at the end. The evidence your activities are already generating, and how to use it.

Participatory Evaluation for Workforce — Evaluating career programs beyond completion rates. Meaningful evidence that actually improves programs.

Partnership to Proposal — From first conversation through funded implementation. The bridge between "we should write a grant together" and a proposal reviewers actually believe.

Layered Partnership Design — How individual partnerships connect to institutional infrastructure and broader systems. Collaborations that outlast individual grants.

Workforce Development Pathways — Designing career pathway programs that treat employers as co-designers. Non-linear, stackable, built for the way careers actually develop.

Start with Story Stacks. All 8 issues are free.

Issue 1 takes about 20 minutes and includes an interactive tool that maps broader impact identity across 6 dimensions. Faculty tend to find it genuinely useful — it surfaces the impact narrative they already have and don't realize.

If you're an evaluator, program director, or administrator working with faculty on partnership design, the same guides apply. The tools are built to work across roles, not just for the faculty who need to write the grants.

Welcome to STEMsaic Research Impacts.