Course Development

ACES Courses

About

ACES courses represent corners of campus that highlights the intent of the AC requirement, while also deepening the meaning of that intent through a combination of multi-disciplinary research and praxis, the development of students and community partners as co-educators, mentoring opportunities, and increased and sustained accessibility of information.

To learn about projects developed with ACES community partners, please visit the...

Creative Discovery Fellows (CDF) Support

Resources

To help support creative/digital projects in your courses, the following set of resources are available for immediate implementation.

Course Development Grants

About

The 2024-25 application cycle for the American Cultures Course Development Grants has closed. Please check back in late June 2025, when we plan to open the 2025-26 cycle.

The American Cultures Course Development Grants awards up to $1,500 to enhance an existing American Cultures course or the design of a new course that has not been offered previously. Funding can be requested in three categories:

Supplies and expenses, which might include photocopying and printing, books and supplies Student hourly help to assist with, for example,...

More Than Words: In Conversation with the Language of Racial and Social Justice-Making

About

Commitments to the work that connects diversity, equity, inclusion and belonging/justice, anti-racism, anti-Blackness, anti-white supremacy, and abolition work, are deep and rich. Each of these terms also has motivations and genealogies. During this event, there was a discussion focused on unpacking the relationships between these frameworks and how they help us better understand and situate the work and the questions that they generate. When we think about the relationships that we hope to foster with and between students, how do we use these frameworks to inform our practice...

What to Do If ICE Comes to Campus: Rights, Recommendations, and Resources

Background

The ongoing national conversation about immigration status lies across a bipartisan political landscape, but statements made by Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) Acting Director Thomas Homan indicate that enforcement will be significantly increased and specifically target California.

On February 26, 2018, in response to the increased and specifically targeted immigration enforcement in California, across the U.C. system broadly and at U.C. Berkeley specifically, procedures and recommendations were shared on best preparing to support all members of our...

Assignment Design for Social Justice Education

ACES Student Projects

Find on our Student Projects page a collection of the powerful projects growing from the collaborative understanding and effort developed in UC Berkeley's ACES courses to inspire you to create thought-...

Difficult Knowledge, Trauma Informed Pedagogy and Safe-ish Spaces

Event Description

Violence and trauma are all around us—fatal shootings by police, sexual violence, family separations, addiction, abuse, displacement of refugees. Often, these situations give rise to individual healing journeys and collective efforts to create change. But the pain and loss embedded in them also have a damaging effect long after the events have passed.

We invite many difficult experiences into our classrooms, historically intimate and distant, often through written and visual text depicting traumatic events and experiences. At the same time, we have many students...

Antiracism Pedagogy & Equity-Based Learning Winter Institute

Event Description

Since 2018, the CDF program has supported instructors in developing creative design assignments, assignments that are intentionally built to support faculty and students in ways that are adaptive, equity-oriented, and foster antiracism. In the CDF Winter Institute participants developed actionable strategies that build antiracist and equity-based education.

In conversation with CDF faculty, staff, and students, the Winter Institute discussed how within the current condition of remote instruction and the devastating effects of the...

The Problem(s) with Grading: Making a Case for Contract Grading

Event Description

Building on the groundwork of the Antiracism Winter Institute, the CDF Program co-sponsored and co-facilitated a follow-up seminar in late April centered on contract grading. The two-day workshop, The Problem(s) with Grading: Making a Case for Contract Grading, invited participants to explore two models of contract grading, Specifications Grading and Labor-based Contract Grading. On the first day, participants engaged in current research that explores how traditional grading methods structure...