Announcing the Inaugural Do Good Campus Fund Grant Recipients

College of Computer, Mathematical and Natural Sciences

Bitcamp is the University of Maryland's annual spring hackathon and has been one of the largest collegiate hackathons on the east coast over the past ten years. With a mission to address inclusivity and diversity in technology education, Bitcamp brings together more than 1,000 students annually, offering workshops, challenges and tracks spanning various tech fields. Leveraging support from the Do Good Campus Fund will enable them to provide a space for students to learn and grow, teaching them how to apply their skills to develop solutions that make the world a better place.

Office of Undergraduate Research, The First-Year Innovation & Research Experience (FIRE) 

Collective Memory of the City of College Park aims to engage students in collecting oral histories from residents and combining them with existing archival materials, culminating in a larger project that tells stories of College Park’s history and placemaking. This project will create a digital archive which community members can visit virtually to learn about College Park's unique and varied history as well as pop-up exhibits around town for the public to visit. 

College of Education

This project explores the unique and complex histories of Cuba and the United States. It will add a new social justice dimension to UMD’s Cuba study abroad program, which has been functioning for more than a decade, has led more than 100 University of Maryland students to Cuba, and has deep community ties within the education sector in Cuba.

Robert H. Smith School of Business

Game Changers’ mission is to empower young athletes all around the globe by supporting the redistribution of sports equipment to children in need. Since its founding in 2016, Game Changers has donated more than 100,000 pieces of equipment worth over $250,000 to more than 130 partner organizations in nine countries. This Campus Fund project plans to develop a free-to-use marketplace on the Game Changers New York website where donors can offer equipment and volunteers to meet the needs of Game Changers’ partners who are engaging youth in sports. 

College of Computer, Mathematical and Natural Sciences

This project aims to help Terrapin Teachers address mathematical proficiency via game-based learning in three local middle schools. Students in Terrapin Teachers courses visit local classrooms in Prince George’s County public schools for early field placements. The Terrapin Teachers program hopes to update the classroom resources used in the middle school classrooms, specifically with "educationally rich mathematical games" that they believe will be very effective in leveling the playing field for students. 

College of Information Studies

TechBridge is a unique intergenerational mentorship program with technology education that fosters reciprocal, two-way learning: students mentor older adults on digital technologies through tutoring and collaborative design sessions; and the older adults help students develop important communication and intergenerational skills to place them in good stead for future employment with the technology sector. Ultimately, more than 200 students will be able to participate in this program over the next year. 

College of Behavioral and Social Sciences

Kesem at the University of Maryland supports children through and beyond their parent or caregiver’s cancer. Through their flagship program, a week-long sleepaway camp, Kesem provides a community of support for children impacted by cancer. The demand for a camp experience like this continues to rise, with 90 kids attending last summer and even more expected in summer 2024. 

College of Behavioral and Social Sciences

Outreach Events for Children with Cochlear Implants and their Families hosts on-campus events for children with cochlear implants (CIs) and their families to meet other deaf children. The children engage in fun, educational activities while their parents participate in a researcher-led working group, sharing experiences and learning about the latest CI research. Parents find these events valuable for getting answers to their questions about their child’s hearing, speech, and language development. At the same time, undergraduate students’ involvement in the program often encourages them to pursue a career working with individuals with CIs.

College of Education

This project from doctoral students in the Temperament and Narratives Lab develops parents’ and educators’ ability to use storytelling as a tool to coach children’s Social Emotional Learning (SEL) in Prince George’s County public schools. The team aims to reach a larger and more racially, ethnically and economically diverse population of elementary school students, while also disseminating their story-based intervention at conferences to equip other practitioners with the skills to promote childrens’ social and emotional development.

Division of Student Affairs

For more than 13 years the Student Success Initiative (SSI) has been a unique population-level, student-centered approach focused on increasing retention and graduation rates of Black students at the University of Maryland. The proposed series of events, including listening sessions, student empowerment activities, a community-wide study hall, and monthly check-ins, will provide valuable support, resources and a deeper sense of community for Black students.

College of Education

This project has the goal of growing and diversifying the teacher workforce by recruiting community college transfer students to the UMD College of Education. It addresses two very important goals: to increase the recruitment and retention of multilingual and racially and ethnically diverse teacher candidates; and to increase the number of individuals completing College of Education teacher preparation programs to support school system needs to fill vacancies with certified, well-qualified educators.

Division of Student Affairs

The Leadership and Community Service-Learning Office (LCSL) is focused on engaging students in experiential and community-based learning to advance critical competencies in leadership, community and global engagement, self-development and critical thinking. This project will enable LCSL to design, test, and launch three co-curricular, open-learning leadership education courses and develop a leadership learning repository. The courses will help UMD students gain leadership skills that employers identify as necessary for success in the workplace.

A. James Clark School of Engineering

Managed by the Women in Engineering (WIE) Program, Environmentally and Socially Responsible Engineering (ESRE) team, and the Mechanical Engineering Department, the GOAL program was developed in 2020 to close opportunity gaps in engineering education for K-12 students. UMD students work closely with faculty and staff as well as K-12 teacher partners to design and test prototypes of engineering materials and corresponding curriculum. This project will engage public school students in experiential learning, and will enable the team to form more educational and corporate partnerships to sustain the project over the long term.

College of Arts and Humanities

HHUM106, “The Arts and Humanities in Practice'', is one of the four required courses for the Honors Humanities living-learning program. This course will incorporate a mural painting curriculum to raise awareness about environmental justice issues facing Prince George’s County. It is an inclusive, creative, innovative, experiential project, using public art to bring attention to environmental justice via active student engagement and arts education.

College of Computer, Mathematical and Natural Sciences

This project aims to increase the number of underrepresented minority students in the STEM fields by creating an experiential mathematics course for undergraduate students that empowers students to apply their math skills through outreach to high school students. The team is piloting a new MATH 400-level course, “Experiential Learning: Data, Geometry, and Outreach,” which will employ a five-part educational strategy: participation, satisfaction, learning, application, and impact. The “application and impact” will be realized through undergraduate students’ outreach to more than 500 high school students. 

School of Architecture, Planning and Preservation

This project focuses on providing opportunities for underrepresented students to engage in fieldwork, fostering experiences that can lead to employment in the archaeology field. The pathway program is intended to increase diversity among archaeological practitioners and increase access for communities that have historically lacked the resources to engage in archaeological research on their own.

College of Arts and Humanities

Public Art is an innovative and compelling idea to integrate art into the landscape at the University of Maryland. From murals to monuments, sculptures to digital projections, public art has the power to transform its environment and to express a community’s character, diversity and values. This project provides students with an incredible opportunity to understand the process of commissioning and installing public art. 

School of Public Health

This project-based course aims to enhance the practical and technical skills of UMD’s diverse student body and align their learning with employer expectations, effectively bridging the ‘skills gap’ and preparing graduates to ‘do good’ in their careers. Students will collaborate with community partner organizations to identify, analyze and address health disparities, environmental issues, social determinants of health and more. Upon completion of the course, students will be able to identify grand challenges in public health, assess community needs, apply public health frameworks and theories, and design feasible community interventions. 

School of Public Policy

Roots Africa was established in 2017, beginning as a UMD student club and growing to a network reaching 600-700 farmers connected to African institutions in Uganda, Cameroon and Nigeria. Roots Africa students train farmers in agricultural production and will train them in how to increase their revenue by building their capacity in intellectual property business strategies and tools.

Philip Merrill College of Journalism

This project seeks to enhance public proficiency in discerning and evaluating online information, providing college students with a platform to impart media literacy to the community through pop-up exhibits. The Media, Self and Society Scholars program will revamp its curriculum to provide opportunities for students to participate in service learning and experiential learning, such as partnering with local schools and libraries to promote media literacy and launching an alternative spring break opportunity to serve and create educational media content along the Harriet Tubman Underground Railroad Historic Byway. 

Division of Student Affairs

Established in 2004, the Ten Terp Plan on Sexual Assault Prevention (TTPSAP) emerged from a fruitful collaboration between the Department of Fraternity and Sorority Life staff, Campus Advocates Respond and Educate to Stop Violence (CARE) staff, and proactive student members from the fraternity and sorority community. The project will establish a course to train peer facilitators to host dialogues centered on bystander intervention, understanding sexual assault, rape culture, dating violence and examining the traditional confines of femininity and masculinity. The program will scale through a train-the-trainer model, whereby student facilitators who have completed the course can train future students.

College of Agriculture and Natural Resources

This project aims to build a safe and sustainable outdoor play center for a community in East Baltimore City, as a collaboration between UMD Architecture students, the Collington Square neighborhood in Baltimore and the Baltimore Department of Recreation and Parks. The group aims to make the play space safe and enjoyable for the children in Collington Square/Broadway East while giving UMD students a high-impact experiential educational experience. 

College of Behavioral and Social Sciences

MLAW is the undergraduate law program at the University of Maryland. The project aims to develop and expand experiential education for the College Park Scholars' Justice and Legal Thought program, MLAW minor courses, and the Carey School of Law. The project will create and integrate lessons into law courses that develop students’ ability to build relationships across different communities and collaborate with local nonprofits serving refugees, a growing need in the Prince George’s County area.

College of Agriculture and Natural Resources

This project builds on a decade of work to establish a hunger-free campus through a multi-pronged approach: providing fresh produce from three campus food gardens and Terp Farm, fostering student experiential work-learning opportunities, and developing a survey instrument to demonstrate the ongoing need for services and sustained funding. Over 28,800 students, faculty, and staff have used the Campus Pantry since 2014, indicating that this is a much needed program and has proven to have a profound impact on this campus. The project will employ a team of students to support nutritious food production, emergency food distribution, nutrition education, and communications that spread information about this model to other universities.

Division of Student Affairs & The College of Education

This project will host the first-ever gatherings and symposium connecting all tutoring and mentoring initiatives on campus that work with local schools and nonprofits. These convenings will lead to increased adoption of best practices, improved training, and new tools that can be used by UMD mentors and tutors on campus and in surrounding communities for years to come. 

College of Behavioral and Social Sciences

This project aims to address the opioid crisis by establishing a digital Peer Hub in Maryland and providing educational materials for peer recovery specialists who have overcome substance use themselves. With the support of current undergraduate students, the team will fill existing training gaps and expand the ability of peers to access information, make connections, identify recovery friendly employers, and receive support. Through all of these efforts, the Peer Hub will transition evidence-based models from research into accessible community resources.

College of Education

Promoting Meaningful Interaction and Social Engagement (PROMISE) is a community of Asian American caregivers of children and youth with special needs in the D.C., Maryland and Virginia area that connects families and professionals to exchange resources. PROMISE started in the summer of 2023 with UMD students and 19 Asian American autistic children in collaboration with the Chinese Culture and Community Service Center and with the support of the Faculty Student Research Award of the Graduate College at UMD. This project will build upon the success of year one while also increasing the level of support for children and youth and the project’s capacity to measure its impact for future program growth.