First Step

First Step (R&C and Foreign Language) Discovery Project

Funded 2021-24

The impact the First Step program has had on the undergraduate curriculum at Berkeley is remarkable–reaching about 2,500 students across its 3 years of funding, and projected to reach some 800 more every year even after the term of funding. Their major success is reflected not only in the sustainability of the model they developed and implemented, but in the personal and pedagogical transformations wrought by the students and instructors they engaged.

  • Reach: 2,500 + 800 new students annually, constantly expanding.
  • Program sustainability beyond grant term: The Discovery innovations have become institutionalized in [about 40 courses across 22 Reading & Composition (R&C) and Language departments] and their curriculum, meaning that thousands more students will benefit from these Discovery innovations in upcoming semesters. There has also been upwards curricular migration in some of these departments, bringing Discovery innovations to upper division coursework.
  • Vertical scaffolding of courses to better serve undergraduates as developing writers and language learners 
  • Continuity and collaboration among faculty and graduate students, many of whom are continuing the work of this project 
  • Campus recognition and visibility: “Five of the University Library's six lower division research prizes in AY: 2022-23 were awarded to students whose instructors are or have been part of the First Step project. All these projects will be featured in the Library’s publication, Fiat Lux….Additionally [in Spring 2023], Pat Steenland’s College Writing R4B student Miya Rosenthal won the Undergraduate Immigration Project Prize in the Creative Projects category for Oral History of Yuriko Kamiya:  A Year in Infamy, a documentary she made about her grandmother.”
  • Dedicated webspace to feature student work: First Step also crafted a website to archive and display both the innovative teaching practices of their graduate students and the projects the undergraduates produced in their courses.   

Additional Resources

First Step Discovery Website

Discovery Trailblazers First Step

Student Voices

Student voices from the First Step project help us to see this transformative change most clearly. First Step Discovery brings the classroom to life.

For my capstone project, I generated a description of my artwork using AI, fed it into an AI image generator, and then generated another description based on the result. Using this method of AI Art ‘Telestrations’, I developed a loop in which AI feeds on itself, enabling me to observe and critique how AI generated content evolves.
Discovery Student
I explored the history of deaf activism at UC Berkeley to showcase the importance of accessibility and inclusion. Using a multimodal format, I also relied on the film Crip Camp and my own experiences learning ASL on campus as primary source material to explore the positive impact of creating an inclusive environment.
Discovery Student