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.

The application deadline is November 1, 2026.

Apply

1. 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, 2026.

• 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

Evaluating Failed, Ongoing, and Successful Decentralized Interventions for Drinking Water in Developing Countries  

Project 1 (Faculty Lead: Dr. Anastasia Schauer): 

 Codesign context-specific household filtration solutions with Moringa oleifera. The goal of this project should be to develop household water filtration solutions using locally available materials, determine the contextual suitability of the solutions, and engage community members as co-designers. Students on this project team will conduct market analyses of the currently available materials for household filtration in each context with the partnership of local collaborators, then translate these material availability findings into context-conscious household filter designs built in Austin, Texas, that could then undergo microbiological efficacy testing at UT. These designs would be developed collaboratively by regular meetings between all Universities involved. Finally, the students will replicate these designs in each international location and develop and conduct community interventions and surveys to further refine the design and evaluate if household filtration and the incorporation of Moringa oleifera is a viable option for each context. Deliverables may include workshops or peer-reviewed articles in design and engineering education venues.  

Project 2 (Faculty Lead: Dr. Manish Kumar):  

Implement innovative membrane coating technologies for optimization of Solar Water Farms (SWF). The goal of this project should be to develop and implement a membrane coating to prevent scaling and buildup on reverse osmosis membranes. Students could begin by conducting feasibility assessments at the lab scale using synthetic water targeted to the quality of each proposed and existing solar water farm site in Kenya, Tanzania, and Colombia. Next, students could determine which sites and contexts would be best suited for the membrane innovation, based on a technical and economical assessment through observing water quality challenges and local material availability. Teams could choose to execute a water quality study in Cabo de la Vela to understand the unique technological challenges associated with the failed SWF site. Students could design experiments to be conducted in the lab in Austin to determine the long-term feasibility of the proposed membrane coating solutions. Finally, the team could implement and evaluate the success of incorporating this technology at selected field sites in Kenya. Deliverables may include technical briefs or peer-reviewed articles in water technology venues.  

Project 3 (Faculty Lead: Dr. Patrick Bixler): Developing a framework to evaluate how regional characteristics impact solar water farm success and potential impacts across Kenya, Tanzania, and Colombia. The goal of this project should be to understand how contextual factors impact clean water access across the field sites, and how this access is impacted by the presence of SWFs. First, to complement prior insights gathered from Kenya and Tanzania, students could complete a preliminary literature assessment of the water context in Northern Colombia. This would include conducting a comprehensive literature review of the current state of water in northern Colombia from a social, political, and environmental lens, in addition to holding regular meetings with the GivePower Engineering team to better understand their goals and current challenges with implementing SWF technology in Cabo de la Vela. Next, through developing and conducting surveys across all three involved countries, students could identify community-specific optimal intervention strategies relating to community-scale SWFs or potential for implementation of household-scale point-of use filtration. This would involve survey conduction in towns containing both future sites and currently operating SWFs. Students can then compare these results to findings from past studies concentrated in Kenya and Tanzania to create a framework for best fit water treatment interventions based on communities globally based on water source and current water use characteristics. Deliverables may include policy briefs or peer-reviewed articles in social science venues.  

 

Production and Measurement of Isotopes for Clean Energy, Robust Infrastructure, and Fundamental Science 

 

Project 1 (Faculty Lead: Dr. Bill Charlton)

Tuning of 135Cs production using the NETL Digital Twin. UT NETL has an ideal facility to produce 135Cs through in-core irradiation of isotopically-enriched 134Xe gas within the 3-Element-Irradiator (3EL). Generally, UT NETL has a robust isotope production program, often for medical and industrial applications. The case of 135Cs is interesting since the flux must be sufficient to produce significant quantities of 135Xe via neutron absorption while allowing the majority of those atoms to beta-decay to 135Cs rather than ‘burning up’ the 135Xe to 136Xe through an additional neutron absorption. The UT NETL Digital Twin program will allow a student group to optimize this production process as well as ensure that the reactor can be operated in such a manner without ‘xenon preclusion’ or other operational constraints.   

 

Project 2 (Faculty Lead: Dr. Bill Charlton)

More accurate simulations of 137Cs byproducts in nuclear engineering applications. The isotope 137Cs is one of the most important byproducts of nuclear power generation. By improving our understanding of 135Xe to 135Cs and 135Cs to 136Cs production within a nuclear reactor, one student team will be able to better constrain the environmental impact of any potential release of fission products.   

Project 3 (Faculty Lead: Dr. Scott Kravitz)

Exploration and simulation of 136Xe detector techniques for neutrinoless double beta decay and solar neutrino measurements. Dr. Kravitz leads multiple efforts to detect fundamental particle physics phenomena with xenon. One student team will explore measurements of the 136Cs nucleus at ILL as it relates to both 136Xe searches for neutrinoless double beta decay as well as solar neutrino detection. For the former, 136Cs is bypassed as 136Xe double beta decays to 136Ba, and measurements of 136Cs nuclear matrix elements are of interest to such predictions. For the latter, interaction with a solar (electron) neutrino would transmute 136Xe into 136Cs; hence, measurement at ILL of any sufficiently long nuclear state lifetimes (~10 ns or longer) would inform possible detection mechanisms for this process.   

 

Project 4 (Faculty Lead: Dr. Will Flanagan)

Discovery of 136Cs nuclear states. Both of Dr. Flanagan’s measurement campaigns at ILL FIPPS have yielded a multitude of new nuclear states as shown in Figure 3. One student team would be dedicated to exactly such a pursuit and would focus on data analysis and nuclear modeling of the 135Cs to 136Cs neutron capture process.  

 

 

---

For Faculty

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

Faculty teams are comprised of 2-3 faculty. The faculty team must include two faculty leaders and an optional third faculty serving as mentor. 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 2027: 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 2027: 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 2027, summer 2027, and/or December 2027-January 2028 (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

Applications for 2026-2027 faculty proposals are now closed. Applications for 2027-2028 will open in spring 2027.

 

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.

Explore Events »