The CIRTL AGEP project (2016-2022) worked to increase the number of Black, Hispanic, and Indigenous (BHI) scholars entering STEM faculty careers, and to improve the academic climate experienced by BHI scholars. The ten participating universities established a Networked Improvement Community (NIC) to affect change within and across institutional partners with a focus on improving scholar experiences and creating more inclusive environments for all graduate students and postdocs, especially BHI scholars.

NICs are structured collaborations intended to accelerate innovation. They are collaborative and utilize innovative efforts to address systemic, complex, and entrenched issues. In this toolkit, those considering a NIC structure to advance BHI scholars into the professoriate can consider these tools as a whole.

The toolkit is also structured for campuses to adapt and adopt individual tools independent of doing so within a NIC framework.