The Discovery Initiative has organized a number of projects to advance its mission of creating more equitable student access to high impact learning experiences:
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Curricular Innovation - We have a vision that all majors on campus should include high-impact discovery experiences. Toward this aim, in 2020, we launched a Departmental Innovation Award Program providing funding and guidance to departments for a multi-year process of refining their vision and implementation plan for Discovery at Scale.
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Discovery Hub Web Tools - Berkeley offers undergraduates an unparalleled array of experiential learning opportunities beyond the classroom. To help our students navigate and access these opportunities we created a suite of online tools including a Discovery Opportunities Database, a collection of “getting started guides” across multiple forms of discovery, a video archive of student discovery stories, and more
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Discovery Workshop Series open to all undergraduates - Planning and carrying out discovery projects requires specific skills and support. We created a workshop series that supports students in every facet of discovery project planning.
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Communications: Shifting the narrative about what undergraduate experience can be at Berkeley. Current students and prospective students alike need to know that Berkeley has unparalleled campus opportunities for experiential learning. They also benefit from understanding how important hands-on projects are for student success in this era of higher education. This is particularly true for first generation and URM students. For these reasons and more, we do communications work to invigorate a new narrative of undergraduate possibility at UC Berkeley. Our campus banner project, our video archive of student stories, our collaborations with New Student Services and Admissions, our Hub email list, and the work of our advising council (see below) are a few examples of how we work toward this goal.
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Discovery Advising & Student Services Staff Council - In 2021, this council was formed to directly engage the advising and student services community in the Discovery Initiative. The council regularly hosts educational events in collaboration with Advising Strategy + Training. Our staff resource page presents a continually growing set of resources to guide staff work with students. We’ve piloted our consultation process through a multi year partnership with the Transfer Center to more fully integrate undergraduate discovery strategies into their popular Transition to Cal course.
- Creative Discovery Internship Stipends and Course Support: This pilot builds a model for best supporting students to pursue high impact immersive experiences. The program provides undergraduate students livable stipends for internships in creative fields and is dovetailed with a professional development cohort to reflect on and make the most of their internship experience.