Current Projects
Project supervisor: Dan Kampsen, director of global safety and operations
Scholars: Nadia Jeon and Shishir Liz
This project aims to identify and evaluate AI platforms capable of generating accurate and consistent travel briefs for the Drexel Travel Risk Review Committee. The project will involve researching and testing various AI systems by submitting standardized fact patterns and analyzing their outputs over time. The goal is to determine which platforms are best suited to support travel-related research and brief generation, ultimately recommending one or two top-performing tools for ongoing use.
Project supervisors: Youngmoo Kim, vice provost for university and community partnerships, Joanne Ferroni, assistant vice provost for anchor partnerships, Chris Spahr, executive director of the Dornsife Center for Neighborhood Partnerships, Rachel Viddy, director of parograms and partnerships
Scholar: Sukriti Dhungel, Dom Lopez and Victoria Rodríguez Villarreal
Building upon the work of the 2024/2025 Nina Henderson Provost Scholars, this project will assist the Office of University and Community Partnerships in continuing to collect data related to student interaction with the centers and programs within our office (Lindy Center, Dornsife Center for Neighborhood Partnerships, ExCITe Center, Writers Room, Lindy Scholars) in order to identify themes related to student belonging, skill development, civic learning, and West Philadelphia partnerships.
Using this data, Nina Henderson Scholars will develop a narrative report that shows UCP impacts as well as makes recommendations as to how UCP can more deeply connect students to engaged learning experiences in our West Philadelphia community. Finally, Nina Hendersons Scholars will use multiple forms of media to share the student interactions with UCP to a broader student audience to raise awareness of the importance of UCP to a student experience that aligns with Drexel’s mission of integrating education, scholarship, diverse partnerships, and our global community to address society’s most pressing challenges through an inclusive learning environment, immersive experiential learning, external partnerships, transdisciplinary and applied research, and creative activity.
Project supervisors: Kevin Egan, director of outreach, Pennoni Honors College, and Steve Weber, vice provost for undergraduate education and curriculum
Scholar: Emily Liz and Chloe Mshana
This project focuses on gathering data and feedback to inform how best to deliver core competencies in support of student success and engagement as part of the broader imperatives of academic transformation. The NHP Scholars will catalog preexisting high-impact practices for learning across the University and will research topics of interest among the undergraduate student body to identify how these map onto the core competencies. Under the guidance of the project supervisors, the NHP Scholars will make recommendations for high-impact practices and relevant topics to be developed in pilot courses. The NHP Scholars will also collect data on the student experience in these classes and will use this data to develop a report on findings for future course development along with recommendations on how to communicate the value of the core competencies to their fellow students.
Project supervisors: Mathy Stanislaus, vice provost and executive director of The Environmental Collaboratory; Hugh Johnson, senior director of research strategy and development; Sammy Shuster, program manager
Scholar: Anh Nguyen, Naghmeh Ghalamsiah
The Environmental Collaboratory (TEC) seeks to co-fund, co-design, and co-implement replicable, transdisciplinary on-the-ground solutions with community partners that drive systemic change and align climate transition and environmental justice with the needs of our communities. The Environmental Collaboratory is centrally positioned in the Office of the Provost of Drexel University to facilitate the expertise in environmental sciences, engineering, data, law, health care, public health, policy, social sciences, and humanities and the capabilities of its faculty, researchers, staff and students.
The NHPS Scholar will be working on three current TEC initiatives:
Community Environmental Dashboard
The Environmental Collaboratory (TEC) is developing a community-hosted Environmental Data Dashboard designed to be accessible, informative, and co-owned by the communities it serves. The dashboard will compile data from a wide range of sources, including environmental monitoring systems, public health databases, community surveys, and partner organizations, to present key indicators such as air and water quality, green space access, pollution levels, and health outcomes like asthma and heat-related illnesses. It will integrate both publicly available city data and community-collected data, ensuring that local experiences and concerns are central to its design. Interactive tools will allow residents to engage with the data, contribute their insights, and use the dashboard to advocate for responsive policy and programming. The platform will also uphold principles of data sovereignty, affirming that all data is co-governed by the community and cannot be used without explicit consent. This community-level environmental dashboard will be designed to serve the needs of our community partners while being complimentary to the City of Philadelphia’s dashboard that is concurrently being developed by the Academy of Natural Science. Together these will serve as important tools for decision making and advocacy and future experiential learning opportunities.
Emergency Preparedness
TEC is producing an Emergency Preparedness Report that outlines actionable, community-centered strategies to strengthen preparedness and recovery in the face of climate-related disasters. Drawing from feedback gathered at TEC’s January 30th Emergency Preparedness Convening, as well as follow-up interviews and focus groups, the report will feature: (1) practical, locally implementable recommendations, (2) opportunities for cross-sector collaboration, (3) user-friendly policy and resource guides for community organizations and local governments, and (4) a strategic roadmap detailing both immediate and long-term actions. Climate-driven emergency preparedness draws upon expertise in communication, urban planning, public health, finance, engineering, design and other disciplines creating opportunities for transdisciplinary research and experiential learning for students and faculty.
Sustainable and Just Future
Sustainable & Just Future (SJF) is a campus-wide initiative to embed climate education across all academic disciplines. This project focuses on translating student-led research, gathered from over 270 survey responses, focus groups, and open comments, into actionable institutional change. Next steps for this project will focus on curricular reforms, the integration of climate justice pedagogy, and the inclusion of sustainability themes in general education and major-specific courses which will be supported through surveying prospective students to understand how climate education influences their college decisions and work to expand partnerships with faculty, administrators, and community organizations.
Project supervisors: Lynne Hickle, Executive Director of Cooperative Education and Melanie Kraus, Director of Cooperative Education
Scholars: Zarah Malik and Ibrahim Raheel
For us to realize President Merlo’s vision and become the global leader of experiential learning, we need to make visible what those opportunities are and how students and other stakeholders can benefit from them. The long term goal of this project would be for an easily accessible, searchable, consistently maintained database of ELOs be created and offered for students and other stakeholders (community members, academic advisors, employers, etc.) to access. This database would not only include what the ELO is, but also its benefits, costs, preparation requirements, learning outcomes and point(s) of contact, to start.