How to Apply

For Students

Student teams are comprised of 3-4 students from different majors and/or colleges and schools. International students are eligible and encouraged to participate. Individual student projects will be considered if appropriately justified and under exceptional circumstances.

Apply

1. Faculty programs will be announced at the beginning of the Fall 2024 semester. Once announced, select a Faculty Program. Attend an information session to learn more.
2. Form a team with 3-4 undergraduate students from different majors.
3. Identify a project that fits within the faculty program’s theme. Choose from a list of project examples or propose your own.
4. Teams must submit their application via email to presidentsaward@austin.utexas.edu by the deadline of 5 pm on November 1, 2024.

• Submit one application per team
• Students can only join one team and submit one application
• Application includes: 
  • Project Summary
  • Team Composition
  • Give back to UT
  • Student Resumes

Award Details

• The award covers international travel expenses, living expenses, and health insurance

Eligibility

In order to apply, undergraduate students are required to satisfy the following requirements:

• Minimum 3.0 cumulative GPA*
• Good standing with the university**
• Students have to be enrolled in the fall semester following summer participation

* Students with a GPA below 3.0 will be considered if endorsed by a faculty member.

** Students must be in good academic and disciplinary standing to apply to and participate in international education opportunities. Student may not be on disciplinary probation, suspension or deferred suspension at the time of application, prior to or during their time abroad. Students on academic probation may not apply or participate.

Student Project Examples

Haiku Horizons: Bridging Cultures through Creative Technology and Immersive Experience

Project 1: XR Nature Experience

• Objective: Create a XR narrative that uses haiku as a central storytelling element to guide participants through different scenarios illustrating the effects of climate change.
• Sample Activities
   o Develop a narrative structure where each haiku represents a different chapter or aspect of the climate change story.
  o Use XR technologies to create immersive scenes that correspond to the haikus, enhancing the emotional and educational impact.
  o Include interactive elements that allow participants to influence the story’s outcome, fostering a sense of agency.
• Outcome: An XR experience where participants journey through a series of haiku-inspired vignettes, each illustrating a different facet of climate change and prompting reflection and action.
• Example Project: The Sea We Breathe 

Project 2: Online Living Notebook

• Objective: Create an evolving online platform utilizing emergent principles of natural systems to facilitate process-based collaboration and expansive audience engagement.
• Sample Activities:
  o Design and implement a platform for collaboration, resource sharing, project engagement and documentation.
  o Every week students would post an offering or a gift for their cohort: a piece of content on a share online platform. This could be an article, website, art project, voice memo, piece of writing, video, journals, discussions, etc.
  o Dramaturgical resource for public participants to learn more about both the process of creating the immersive experience as well as an opportunity to engage beyond their in-person visit.
• Outcome: Participate in an online community, engaging in discussion and actionable steps toward addressing climate change in your daily life, which often can seem overwhelming. ongoing engagement and archiving
• Example Project: www.giftsforthereview.com/gifts

Project 3: Digital Data Garden

• Objective: Create an immersive digital garden that uses climate change data from various ecosystems.
• Sample Activities:
  o Research different ecosystems and the impact of climate change on each.
  o Use interactive projections and immersive soundscape to allow participants to explore the garden, with haikus displayed as part of the environment.
  
• Example Project: Seeing the Invisible

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Cultivating Resilience: A Comparative Study of Urban Agriculture, Technology, and Resilience in Central Texas and Öresund Scandinavia 

Community Architecture For Resilience
Study urban design and community architecture in Austin and Öresund that enhances local resilience. Organize and run workshops that focus on sustainable design, green technologies, and community engagement. Propose innovative ideas to make a city more sustainable and resilient.

New Technologies for Urban Farming
Investigate the integration of IoT, AI, and other new technologies into urban agricultural practices in both Austin and the Öresund region. Gauge the effectiveness of current systems and research potential for new technologies. Prototype new systems for monitoring and optimizing farming processes in different urban settings.

Urban Green Spaces
Explore cultural differences between Austin and Öresund influence and impact the policies behind green spaces and infrastructure. Assess the goals and outcomes of these spaces on urban biodiversity, ecological resilience, community engagement, and social benefits. Design proposals for new green projects.

Project Outcomes
Projects may result in research papers, design documents, presentations, workshops, or prototypes. Students could present these outcomes to officials in Austin, Malmö, and Copenhagen, elevating the profile of their work and connecting directly with policy makers.

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Impact of Service-Learning Projects on Rural Communities in India

• Develop a toolkit of best practices for assessment of community needs and then using these tools to assess needs in a vulnerable community.
• Develop a toolkit of best practices to assess impact of interventions on community wellbeing and then use these tools to assess specific past projects in rural India.
• Use a Community Based Participatory Research (CBPR) approach to understand community perspectives. These collaborations aim to uncover community-defined problems and contribute to goal setting with communities

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For Faculty

Faculty are critical to the success of the President’s Award for Global Learning.

Faculty teams are comprised of 2-3 faculty. Faculty form interdisciplinary teams and identify both a global challenge and an international partner, considering how their project and/or regional expertise contribute to the team. The proposed challenge has to be one that can be addressed in a global context, strengthened from an interdisciplinary perspective and is not specifically related to an individual’s research agenda. The faculty team should consider how to expand existing research interests or international relationships to incorporate interdisciplinary student learning. Students will then identify a new problem space and appropriate project or research-based questions within this area and will work under the faculty leadership throughout all phases of the program.

Each faculty team/student cohort will engage in experiential learning with both on-campus coursework and international travel.  Faculty teams, in virtual collaboration with the international partner(s), will teach two courses to the program participants:

1. Spring 2025: A 3-credit course that focuses on the technical, cultural, and language/linguistic learning aspects associated with both the global challenge and the student projects. Language/cultural instruction may be taught by a member of the faculty team or by an outside specialist
2. Fall 2025: A 1-credit course that focuses on project outcomes, including sharing lessons learned, disseminating information pertinent to the project to local and regional audiences, as appropriate, and increasing visibility for the identified global challenge

Travel to one or two international locations may occur during spring break 2025, summer 2025, and/or December 2025-January 2026 (winter term). Travel can include one or two trips for a total of six weeks abroad.

UT faculty, including tenure-track and non-tenure track positions, are encouraged to apply.

Award Details

Eligibility

The President’s Award for Global Learning is only open to UT Austin tenured and tenure-track faculty members, lecturers, professors of practice, and Assistant or Associate Deans. Teams of 2-3 faculty members must consider a topic that will benefit from being addressed from an interdisciplinary perspective. Only one proposal per faculty member may be submitted.

1. Attend or view an information session or meet with Texas Global staff to review the faculty roles and program expectations before submitting a proposal.
2. A letter of support from the most appropriate academic leadership (e.g., department chair, center director, etc.) at UT Austin for the proposed collaboration for each faculty member. The letter must include a statement of support for the faculty member to co-teach the 3-credit and 1-credit courses.
3. Written acknowledgement from the dean for each faculty member in support of the proposal and indicating their support for the faculty to co-teach the fall and spring courses.
4. Commit to fulfill all program expectations, including travel with the team for two trips (maximum of six weeks of travel).

Apply

The deadline to apply for 2025-2026 proposals is May 1, 2025. 

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Get Started

If you are eligible and interested in submitting a proposal, attend an information session to learn more about the application and implementation process.

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