Announcing the 2022 O&E Incentive Grants Award Winners
The Outreach and Engagement Incentive Grants Program serves to address significant community challenges by aligning interdisciplinary faculty, their expertise, their students, and their research. The incentive grants connect NC State faculty to applied scholarship opportunities in communities, stimulating interdisciplinary proposals to compete for funding that will foster innovation between faculty, staff, students, and community partners and help kickstart potential future research and programming.
The 2022 Incentive Grants Awarded proposals will receive $10,000 each to support work through June 2023. The three Incentive Grants Awardees are listed below with a brief description of their proposals.
Exploration of Product Development Partnership Process between Designers and Consumers with Physical Disabilities
Lead PI: Kate Annett-Hitchcock, TATM, Wilson College of Textiles
Co-PI: Kathryn Wozniak, Industrial Design, College of Design
In the Spring 2022 semester, students from the Wilson College of Textiles and the College of Design are partnering with community members in Wake County from the North Carolina Spinal Cord Injury Association (NCSCIA) to identify and to solve problems for accessibility that are currently not addressed by mass market solutions. Our objective is to conduct a pilot study that examines the workflow involved to connect design with final production and distribution, and to identify pain points in the process, engaging consumers with disabilities at every stage of the process. We hope to identify gaps in this development process that contribute to the lack of accessible products in the market, especially for the people who
Critical Making as Critical Care
Lead PI: Dr. Fernanda da Costa Portugal Duarte, Department of Communication, College of Humanities and Social Sciences
“Critical Making as Critical Care” is a pilot program at the Department of Communication with support of NC State Libraries Makerspaces, and Circuit Research Studio, an interdisciplinary, collaborative media research space for CHASS faculty, and graduate students. This program will implement practices of ‘making with’ technologies as a strategy for serious play, critical reflection, and social intervention through a series of face-to-face making workshops and establishing an online community engaged in critical making practices. The purpose of this program is to further critical technology literacy, cultivate embodied intersectional making practices, and engage with social justice design among underserved student populations enrolled in community colleges that are part of the Community College Collaboration (C3) at NC State.
STEM-based Games against Oppression: A multi-week social-justice-focussed game design workshop for Raleigh youth
Lead PI: Lesley-Ann Noel, Department of Art and Design, College of Design
Co-PI: William Cherry, Technology Associate for Research and Scholarship, Research Associate, College of Design
This project aims to engage African American youth in Raleigh, exposing them to three key concepts: social justice, game design, and emerging trends in technology through a series of Design workshops over a period of 8-10 weekends at the College of Design at NC State in Spring 2023. The aims of the project are: to promote youth-led discussions about equity and social justice issues; to expose the youth to Design methods and theory; to increase youth interest in college education, Design and STEM careers, co-creating novel employment opportunities through partnerships and exposure; and to improve confidence and social skills for the youth through signature design pedagogies and design practices such as co-design, critiques, and presentations.
This post was originally published in Outreach & Engagement.
