The Experiential Learning Design Accelerator builds on the vision of 100% Engagement by directly supporting faculty to design undergraduate courses that integrate community engaged experiential learning. Faculty who are selected to the  Accelerator Fellowship join a multi-disciplinary community of practice and receive wrap-around support for project scoping and curriculum co-design with community partners. 

The five-day virtual Intensive kicks-off this year-long program, and introduces faculty to a human-centered design approach for integrating external stakeholders and real projects into either semester-long or 7.5 week courses. In this transformative experiential learning model, students work alongside their peers and community partners to develop desirable, feasible, and viable solutions to challenges informed by partners’ needs

Our long-term goal is to continue to center community engaged pedagogy within our institution. Students are demonstrably more engaged with course contents that integrate real-world challenges, and feel a greater sense of belonging and deeper connection to their communities when provided opportunities to learn alongside peers and partners.  

The Accelerator Intensive is a week-long summer training that launches a one-year Fellowship to provide:

  • Accelerator Intensive Training – 5-day design sprint providing training and application of human-centered design strategies and iterative, creative problem-solving with respect to curriculum development and undergraduate applied learning assignments;  
  • Invitation to participate in longitudinal research study examining potential improvements in students’ sense of self-efficacy and civic-mindedness across multiple dimensions of career-readiness and academic competency;  
  • Mentorship and a community of practice among faculty who have successfully developed scholarship, including grant proposals, papers and presentations based on engaged learning pedagogy;   
  • Support for establishing sustainable community partnerships rooted in true collaboration and mutual understanding of benefits and responsibilities of that collaboration. This includes assistance with translating community partner needs into a class project that supports course objectives and can be completed by students in one semester;  
  • Instructional design support to create learning objects and activities that engage students in applying human-centered concepts and other effective creative problem-solving strategies to unscripted problems facing an organization or community;  
  • Support for broad course promotion to increase enrollment among relevant student populations on campus, if appropriate. 

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The Experiential Learning Design Accelerator Fellowship (The Accelerator) provides dedicated time, direct support, and mentorship to faculty who wish to design new and existing undergraduate courses to integrate community engaged experiential learning. Accelerator Fellows and participating community partners whose work intersects with the Borderlands will receive financial support to complete this work.

Accelerator Application Deadline – June 01, 2024

In addition to a short application, prospective candidates are asked to create a short (3-min) video pitch responding to the following questions:

  • Why the Accelerator? Why now?
  • What is your course idea and how might community partnership(s) be integrated?
  • How could the Accelerator help you to accomplish this?

Pre-recorded videos may include up to three (3) slides. 

2024-2025 Accelerator cohort announced – July 1, 2024

If selected, fellows will are required to participate in the week-long Intensive.

Five-day Intensive – August 12 – 16, 2024, 10:00 AM – 4:00 PM MST via Zoom

In a highly facilitated and rigorous five-days we will move from a concept towards a desirable, feasible, and viable prototype of your course (re)design. Our focus is the design of the student experience that will bring the topics of your courses to life, following an adapted design sprint structure:

  • Day 1: Map
  • Day 2: Sketch
  • Day 3: Decide
  • Day 4: Prototype
  • Day 5: Test

  • Full-time, Tenured, Tenure-track, and Career-Track Faculty teaching undergraduate courses in AY24-25;
  • Faculty who can clearly and convincingly identify the potential of the course disciplinary content to catalyze innovative and responsive student-driven solutions to a particular authentic challenge facing an organization or community;
  • Faculty who can demonstrate intention and capacity to make sustained, authentic partnerships with community organizations central to the new or redesigned course experience;
  • Faculty who can demonstrate there is a significant and diverse group of student learners who will engage in experiential learning by participating in this course;
  • Faculty who can articulate how the new or redesigned course(s) fit into department curricular strategy and the department’s commitment to providing experiential learning to its majors and others;
  • Faculty who can demonstrate successful implementation of innovative assessments of student learning, documentation of curricular innovations leading to improved learning; evidence of faculty teaching excellence;
  • Faculty do not need to have an identified community partner when applying;
  • Faculty who are passionate and committed to reimagining the student learning experience and believe in the transformational potential of community engagement.

  • Complete (re)design and schedule course during the 2024-2025 academic year;
  • Commit to participation in the Accelerator research study which includes student pre and posttests; faculty and community partner surveys;
  • Faculty are expected to attend all five days of the Intensive and participate in scheduled workshops, events, and 1-1s throughout the academic year;
  • Faculty will benefit from interdisciplinary sharing and networking across academic units and academic content.

“There’s nothing I can say to my students in the classroom that will impact them like walking through a muddy estuary, or seeing how happy someone is after they designed them a logo or website. It’s that one-at-a-time connecting, the fact that the work they are doing is benefiting a cause they care about.” – Ellen McMahon, Associate Dean, Professor, Art

“It’s a two-way situation. We’re learning from them, as they’re learning from us. It’s about genuine partnership. We’re not making up work for them to do, so they can learn something. We see them as a force multiplier. There’s a mutual need. They need to place students and we need an expansion or enhancement of what we’re doing that we can’t do without the support of the University.” – T. Van Hook, Community Stakeholder, Habitat Tucson

“The community work completely changed my career path. I went from law enforcement to social work. I found that I worked so well with kids. I still want to be in public service. But not the one that regulates and protects, the one that encourages children to be what they want to be, even if they have disadvantages. ” – Lexi Austin, Student Participant

Accelerator Testimonials

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Questions can be directed to:

Annie Kurtin

Lead, Experiential Learning Design

akurtin@arizona.edu