Funded Projects
| Project Title | Overview of the Project |
|---|---|
| Expanding Professional Competency Building through Theme-Based Masters Project Courses in SEAS Mike Shriberg Environment and Sustainability (SEAS) Sheila Schueller Environment and Sustainability (SEAS) Andy White Environment and Sustainability (SEAS) Justin Schott Environment and Sustainability (SEAS) Lisa DuRussel Environment and Sustainability (SEAS) $16500.00 |
The School for Environment and Sustainability (SEAS) is building on its history of engaged learning through professional problem-solving by running an innovative course structure for our Master’s Project capstone experience. We have been piloting a 3-semester course sequence during which students work across multiple client-based projects within SEAS’ transdisciplinary sustainability themes. This structure provides students with comprehensive and consistent advising with the explicit added benefits of transdisciplinary content, timely professional and personal skill/competency development, and valuable meta-community learning. This innovation has undergone an initial positive formative evaluation and has strong student support, but needs a deeper level of evaluation, a strategic plan for expansion, a common template and structure for competency building, and resources for the participating faculty to convene and accelerate our innovative “community of practice”. Therefore, we request support for a graduate student research assistant and for summer faculty workshops and salary. The outcomes would be a common set of resources and practices on competency building (a “resource library”), an internal strategic plan to grow the program and an academic article as well as conference/workshop presentations. Our ultimate goal is to 1) significantly improve the theme-based masters course structure before scaling it, 2) make the program available to a greater number of students (300 at a time), and 3) inspire others to replicate and build on our model of what we believe will be the future of higher education. |
| Stamps Senior Integrative Project Assessment Rebecca Strzelec Art & Design Veronica Falandino Art & Design $6200.00 |
We seek to engage in a deep assessment of the senior integrative project (IP), or senior capstone. Requirements for the program have not been assessed in the recent past, so it is unclear in what ways the IP is and is not meeting student needs. Each student in the course gets a 7x7x7 foot individual studio space that is then converted into a gallery space, which means that there is a cap on the number of students who can participate. The IP offers students an opportunity to investigate self-directed art and design work. There are three central draws to the course: meeting a graduation requirement, access to studio space, and the opportunity to exhibit work. The broad purpose of the assessment is to collect data that will allow Stamps to make decisions based on curricular purpose rather than ease or anecdotal perceptions. This assessment project may also serve as a way to get a sense of where the program is for accreditation efforts culminating in a 2027 accreditation visit. Note this project proposal draws heavily from a scoping document developed in partnership with Hayley Heaton, Assistant Director of Assessment, and Malinda Matney, Managing Director of Educational Development and Assessment Services, from CRLT. |
| Building a Culturally-Aware Curriculum for Student Engagement with Detroit Small Businesses Julie Hui Information Kristin Seefeldt Public Policy $17474.94 |
The Community Tech Worker (CTW) program builds digital capacity among under-resourced communities. One program iteration prepares local young adults and University of Michigan (UM) students to provide digital assistance to small businesses supported by Detroit’s Jefferson East, Inc. (JEI). The model supports sustainable technology careers and has served over 200 primarily Black-owned businesses and seven tech workers. With National Science Foundation funding, the program is expanding to support Live6 Alliance, a community development organization supporting four more neighborhoods. However, this expansion does not fund the training of UM students, a gap our proposal aims to fill. We aim to develop a curriculum that offers course credits, leading to a Culturally Aware Digital Innovation and Business Support Certificate. This curriculum will train UM students in cultural awareness (Betancourt et al. 2003) and cultural humility (Ortega 2014), while the larger grant enhances local community members’ digital skills, leveraging their intimate knowledge of the community. As the program expands, it is crucial to enhance the curriculum to prepare students for businesses’ diverse technical needs and build lasting partnerships between the university, students, and the community. This is important as the university plans to open a Center for Innovation in Detroit within three years. Other initiatives at UM, like the Ginsberg Center, concentrate their training to help students work with non-profits. In partnership with the Detroit Neighborhood Entrepreneurs Project, which engages 450 students per year, this program supports student engagement with small businesses—a group that requires infrastructural supports distinct from those of non-profits. |
| Immersive Learning in Chemical Engineering: Maximizing Student Accessibility and the Pedagogical Impact of a Virtual Reality (VR)-Enhanced Curriculum Albert Liu Engineering - Chemical Engineering Engineering - Macromolecular Science and Engineering Engineering - Materials Science and Engineering Nicholas Kotov Engineering - Chemical Engineering Engineering - Macromolecular Science and Engineering $10000.00 |
The field of Chemical Engineering is rapidly evolving, and as students explore the fundamental principles governing 3D chemical interactions, the need for innovative teaching methods that promote student spatial cognition and reasoning becomes evident. Integrating the Virtual Reality (VR) technology into our curriculum aims to address this challenge, offering students a high-dimensional perspective that traditional teaching methods cannot provide. Our project aims to systematically explore and evaluate the feasibility of integrating VR into the broader Chemical Engineering curriculum, as well as developing VR-centered pedagogy that maximizes student accessibility and learning outcomes. The introduction of VR into our curriculum represents a “redefinition” of traditional Chemical Engineering pedagogy in our department (innovation in teaching methods and departmental curriculum redesign). This proposal builds on our pilot study in the ChE696 graduate elective, where initial evidence suggested that VR significantly enhances students' understanding of 3D material structures. We propose to expand VR-enhanced teaching to core undergraduate Chemical Engineering courses (ChE342 and ChE343), aiming to develop accessible VR pedagogical approaches and to assess their impact on student learning and engagement. The project will support the infrastructure development towards an educational milieu where students can learn in a more involved, tactile manner. Our activities will center around curriculum redesign, assessment, and optimization of the suite of VR-assisted pedagogical methods we will develop to maximize student accessibility and learning. We aim to evolve from this project a set of evidence-based best practice guidelines that could shape the future of Chemical Engineering instruction nationwide. |
| Codesigning Justice-Oriented Learning for the Health Infrastructure and Learning Systems Programs Francesca Williamson Medical School Vivetha Thambinathan Medical School Zach Landis-Lewis Medical School Cheryl Moyer Medical School $17025.00 |
The proposed project aims to create new Health Infrastructures and Learning Systems (HILS) learning activities to address the Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality Healthcare Equity and Justice competency for learning health scientists. Guided by anti-racist pedagogy, liberatory design, and health justice principles, we propose codesigning a graduate-level HILS health equity course and curricular resources to enhance program-wide justice-oriented learning. Using a democratized approach to learning design, we will collaboratively develop new justice-oriented HILS learning activities through three codesign phases: Phase I (Year 1): Conduct a readiness assessment to characterize HILS community members’ perspectives of the facilitators and potential barriers to implementing justice-oriented learning activities in HILS programs; Phase II (Years 1 & 2): Codesign and pilot a Health Equity and Learning Health Systems elective for students in HILS MS and PhD programs and open to non-HILS students; and Phase III (Year 2): Codesign curricular resources to support HILS faculty’s future efforts to incorporate health equity learning activities, assignments, and assessments into their courses. To evaluate this innovation, we will use realist evaluation to describe “what works, how, in which conditions, and for whom?” By the end of this two-year project, we will have partnered with HILS learners, staff, faculty, alumni, and external advisors to codesign local educational innovation and inform broader efforts to prepare justice-oriented scientists and leaders in learning health systems. |
| Integrating socially-engaged, participatory design pedagogy in complex sociotechnical contexts Aditi Verma Engineering - Nuclear Engineering and Radiological Sciences Stephen Raiman Engineering - Nuclear Engineering and Radiological Sciences Engineering - Materials Science and Engineering Kevin Field Engineering - Nuclear Engineering and Radiological Sciences Todd Randall Allen Engineering - Nuclear Engineering and Radiological Sciences $17500.00 |
Nuclear energy technologies– fission and fusion – are increasingly regarded as vital contributors to climate mitigation efforts underway with the goal of deeply decarbonizing our energy systems by mid-century. However, the history of energy technology development (including nuclear energy) demonstrates that the process of designing and using energy technologies creates significant inequities – extractive and waste management facilities are typically sited around communities of color and low-income communities whereas the power-producing facilities are sited around affluent (predominantly white) communities. In neither case do communities have a say in the design of the facility being built in their community and seldom have a say in the decision to even site that facility. If we are to equitably develop our energy systems of the future, there is an urgent need to reverse this worrying trend. To that end, we aim to train future developers of nuclear energy technologies – fission and fusion – to acknowledge and incorporate social, ethical, and environmental considerations in their engineering practice as well as seek direct community input in the early stages of design. Our specific aim in this project is to integrate socially engaged, participatory design practices across undergraduate course offerings in the Department of Nuclear Engineering and Radiological Sciences. Our project goals are to: 1. Improve the next offering of ENGR100.910; 2. Develop socially-engaged participatory design modules for NERS 250, NERS 425, NERS 491 3. Extract generalizable findings on implementing socially engaged, participatory design in the context of complex engineered systems to be shared with engineering education and design research audiences. |
| Integration of AI and Computational Sciences in Nuclear Engineering Education Majdi Radaideh Engineering - Nuclear Engineering and Radiological Sciences $10000.00 |
NERS at U-M has a rich history of providing theoretical education. However, Nuclear Engineering (NE) education has largely adhered to traditional, theory-centric methods, with limited incorporation of modern tools, including high-performance computing, simulation, artificial intelligence, and machine learning (AI/ML). In the early 2010s, several efforts have attempted for modernizing NE education through augmented reality, modern textbooks with Python, open-source tools, and online courses. Despite these strides, significant gaps remain. NE education innovations have often existed in isolation and have not been fully integrated into mainstream curricula. Additionally, there is a dearth of AI/ML topics in NE education, despite their relevance in the digital era of nuclear power plants. This project seeks to bridge these gaps by achieving two objectives. First, integrating computational science and computer simulation in the nuclear reactor design course (NERS 442) to seamlessly integrate both theoretical and computational instruction throughout the entire semester. Second, development and teaching of a “new” discipline-focused applied AI/ML course (NERS 490/590) to introduce NERS students to the recent state-of-the-art topics in AI/ML along with their coding techniques; allowing NERS students to witness the potential of AI/ML in the context of nuclear science and engineering without delving in complex theory. These courses will equip NERS students with computational skills and AI/ML knowledge, enhancing their readiness for industry, senior design, and graduate research. The broad impact of such philosophy extends beyond NERS, potentially influencing U-M engineering education and NE education at other institutions. |
| Vocal Combat Technique for BFA Actors in Theatre & Drama Jeremy Sortore Music, Theatre & Dance $5369.60 |
Professional actors are frequently asked to perform vocal maneuvers well beyond the scope of everyday life. Particularly in the rapidly-expanding video game industry, demands for vocally aggressive “extreme voice” sounds such as grunting, shouting, and screaming are leading to rampant vocal injury among voiceover artists. Vocal Combat Technique (VCT) is a recent evidence-based innovation for training actors in vocal extremes that has been shown to reduce vocal fatigue and mitigate dysphonia (hoarseness), pain, and vocal handicap. VCT sidesteps more traditional methods that encourage the actor to imaginatively induce distressing psychological states and instead focuses on concrete protocols, based in physiological and acoustic principles of voice production, for reproducing aggressive sounds separate from an imaginative process. Similar to developments in the emerging theatrical intimacy field, where choreography is replacing reliance on actor “chemistry”, this innovation in trauma-informed pedagogy is aligned with the principle of critical engagement of difference espoused by CRLT in its Equity-Focused Teaching framework. VCT promises to provide equitable access to learning/performance opportunities in extreme voice through transparent, scaffolded pedagogy. This project would bring VCT to the University of Michigan Department of Theatre & Drama by training the faculty instructor of theatrical voice/speech in the method and implementing it within the BFA professional acting curriculum. The primary goal of the project is to increase marketable job skills and occupational safety for student actors by expanding faculty expertise in this important emerging subdiscipline. |
| Understanding Digital Wellness: Creating Peer-to-Peer Interventions with Middle School Students Elizabeth Keren-Kolb Education Kristin Fontichiaro Information Beth Sherman Social Work $10000.00 |
Digital wellness is the pursuit of an intentional and healthy relationship with technology both in school and in personal life. Digital wellness prioritizes dialogue over strict rules, allowing individuals to discover and establish their own goals and values for their online experiences. The interprofessional 3-credit Peer-to-Peer Digital Wellness course builds on 10 years of engagement between UM Education students and Ann Arbor Public Schools (AAPS) middle schoolers and provides a unique instructional approach to preparing UM students to focus on mental health wellness about digital device use. With AAPS partners, we will pilot the course in Winter 2024, preparing UM undergraduate and graduate students to become familiar with digital wellness research, middle school mindsets, and facilitation skills. The UM students will then host AAPS 6th graders for two campus visits where the UM students will facilitate activities on unpacking and understanding digital wellness with the tweens. The course then shifts into a community-based learning component when the UM students visit local middle schools weekly to mentor the AAPS students in designing digital wellness activities for their peers. UM students will benefit from a gradual release of responsibility model, gaining independence in working with youth from diverse socioeconomic backgrounds, building mentorship and project management skills, and improving their own digital wellness as well as provide guidance to youth, consistent with UM DEI 2.0 goals. Project funding will remove barriers to participation by supporting UM student travel to schools, providing meals to participants, and providing essential program curriculum development and evaluation. |
