$5,000 Award
Scholars in Scrubs: Improving academic outcomes by promoting belonging and professional identity in undergraduate nursing students
Scholars in Scrubs is a quality improvement pilot project for undergraduate nursing students to improve academic achievement, sense of belonging, and professional identity development. This project will implement a novel peer support program using restorative practice pair experienced and novice nursing students and improve student learning and development. Students will engage in orientation, weekly communication, and facilitated monthly sessions.
The learning objectives align with core competencies from the American Association of Colleges of Nurses (AACN, 2021). By the end of this program students will: 1) Advance the scholarship of nursing (4.1); 2) Integrate diversity, equity, and inclusion as core to one’s professional identity (9.6); 3) Demonstrate a commitment to personal health and well-being, and 4) Demonstrate a spirit of inquiry that fosters flexibility and professional maturity.
$5,000 Award
Transforming the Pediatric Clerkship Using Novel Gamified Learning Techniques and Flipped Classroom Model
The pediatric clerkship curriculum encompasses care of well children, acutely ill patients, and children with chronic conditions. This project pilots a redesigned, learner-centered curriculum that integrates a flipped classroom model with faculty-led, small-group, case-based discussions and faculty-created, gamified learning tools.
Students complete pre-session preparation, allowing in-person time to focus on clinical reasoning, application, and individualized mentorship. A defining feature of the curriculum is the development and study of original educational games designed for pediatric medical education, including Baby on Call!, a scenario-based game focused on pediatric behavior and developmental milestones, and Vax Through Time!, a movement-based, collaborative timeline game that reinforces childhood immunization schedules through visualization and intentional challenge.
$7,500 Award
From Animal Tissue to Repeatable Mastery: A Modular 3D-Printed Implant Placement and Restoration Curriculum for AEGD Residents
Pig-jaw simulations have been used in implant training to provide tactile feedback for drilling and tissue handling. However, this model no longer reflects contemporary implant planning, placement, and restoration, nor the expectations of dental education. Pig-jaws lack standardization and show variability in anatomy and bone density, limiting assessment, benchmarking, and competency evaluation. They also fail to replicate common clinical challenges. Critically, pig jaws do not support digital workflows, guided surgery, or restorative strategies that define modern implant care. Training is limited to a single exposure, offering little opportunity for repetition, or skill progression. In addition, costs, biosafety, disposal and ethical concerns, increase complexity without improving educational. This project addresses these limitations by replacing animal tissue with a modular, repeatable, case-based 3D-printed implant training system grounded in real clinical decision-making. The system will allow residents to simulate implant surgery and restoration on patient-specific maxillary or mandibular arch prototypes multiple times before treating patients, validating both treatment planning and execution.
$7,500 Award
Developing a Transnational Co-Instruction Framework for Social Work Practice with Latine Immigrant Communities
The purpose of this project is to expand the existing Master of Social Work (MSW) Social Work Practice with Immigrants and Refugees course at the 91大神 School of Social Work (UMSSW) by developing an international co鈥�instruction model that incorporates transnational perspectives and engagement with practitioners and educators in Costa Rica. The project builds on an emerging partnership with Viva Nicaragua (VN), a Costa Rica-based organization supporting social justice initiatives through cross-cultural, experiential learning. VN faculty work alongside migrant, refugee, and marginalized communities. Costa Rica hosts one of the largest Nicaraguan immigrant populations in the region,1 making it an ideal site for students to gain transnational perspectives on migration. Through this project, we will formalize our partnership with VN and establish a co-instruction framework and, ultimately, practicum placement opportunities for UMSSW students. We will also develop a Latine populations module to provide focused content on social work practice with Latine immigrant communities.
$7,500 Award
Using AI to Teach AI in Health Science and Human Services
This project focuses on developing a learning program to educate about the ethical integration of artificial intelligence (AI) into health science and human service roles. The program leverages AI-based tools not only as subjects of study but also as active teaching mechanisms, offering participants the opportunity to converse with an AI avatar, and hands-on experience in using AI tools.
$7,500 Award
Learning to Think with AI: Moving Beyond Prompts and Policies
Current approaches to "AI literacy" emphasize prompting as a discrete skill (Jin, et al, 2025), framing effective AI use as generating optimized prompts. As LLMs now autonomously generate and refine prompts, this framing is inadequate and no longer future-proof.
This project proposes an alternative approach developing learners' ability to reason with, through, and against AI while retaining intellectual sovereignty. We pilot a rubric-guided GPT evaluating AI interaction transcripts, providing criterion-referenced feedback on epistemic behaviors rather than output quality. The rubric moves learners from epistemic augmentation (EA), or reasoning outsourced to AI, toward epistemic co-agency (EC), or deliberately interrogating, challenging, and regulating AI outputs.