Faculty and Staff

EDGE seeks course proposals to help address UN Sustainable Development Goals

Experiential Digital Global Engagement program to offer awards to develop student/faculty collaborations between Penn State and four central Asian universities

UNIVERSITY PARK, Pa. — Penn State’s Experiential Digital Global Engagement (EDGE) program is seeking four faculty members to participate in an upcoming grant-funded project focused on addressing select United Nations Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs).

Penn State recently received a Central Asia University Partnership grant from the American Councils for International Education to develop four EDGE collaborations (four- to six-week task-based projects) focused on addressing selected United Nations SDGs, with preference given to Penn State courses that incorporate geographic information system (GIS) applications into the projects. Projects selected will lead to collaborations between students and faculty at Penn State and four universities in central Asia: Tashkent Institute of Irrigation and Agricultural Mechanization Engineers, Tajik Agrarian University, Kazakh National Agrarian Research University, and Osh Technological University.

Penn State faculty members of any rank are encouraged to apply. Applicants will be expected to:

  • demonstrate a desire to engage in collaborative online/virtual exchanges to enhance student learning and engagement around selected United Nations SDGs;
  • develop an EDGE project with a central Asian university faculty partner between March 2022 and August 2022;
  • implement the EDGE project with a central Asian University faculty partner this fall; and
  • share project results during a November 2022 e-conference.

Successful applicants will receive substantial support from EDGE global learning coordinators and be awarded an honorarium to develop and implement their respective projects.

Interested faculty must complete the online grant application, submit a course syllabus for the proposed EDGE collaboration, and submit a 45- to 90-second video describing how the proposed course could be enhanced by engaging in an EDGE collaborative project with one of the selected central Asian university partners. Preference will be given to proposals that incorporate GIS components.

All application materials must be submitted by midnight on Monday, Feb. 14; award recipients will be notified by Feb. 28. Additional information and a complete list of application criteria is available on the EDGE website. To learn more, please contact Nikki Mattson (nla12@psu.edu).

Last Updated January 27, 2022