As we engage with the work of anti-racism and equity-based learning, what concrete examples are available and what strategies are necessary to create anti-racism and equity-based pedagogy in the classroom?
Laura (she/her) is an education researcher focused on mixed methods research and program evaluation. She has a B.S. (Southern Oregon University) and Master’s (UC Berkeley) in chemistry and is currently a PhD candidate in science and math education at UC Berkeley. She has been working with the Creative Discovery Fellows since 2018 and has collaboratively developed a program model and evaluated targeted student, instructor, and program outcomes. Her research interests include exploring how best to make research and evaluation data accessible and...
Every year, a cohort of faculty fellows are drawn from multiple disciplines who design and implement an assignment in their course with support from the program. This page includes case studies of courses that have been a part of the fellowship.
How can the real conditions of the classroom inform the implementation and design of campus curriculum initiatives? How do we design supports for faculty and students in ways that are adaptive, equity oriented, and foster anti-racism?
The Creative Discovery Fellows (CDF) Program helps instructors incorporate creative assignments into UC Berkeley’s undergraduate social justice graduation requirement. The CDF Program supports faculty and students in utilizing digital design tools to deepen and enhance the academic experience and to explore new avenues for public dissemination of...
ESPM 50AC: “Introduction to Culture and Natural Resource Management” explores how the health of the environments we depend on is connected to natural resource management, which in turn arises out of historically and culturally specific relationships between humans and nature. The creative project utilizes a form of media to present the student’s research on a topic addressing a course-related theme in the United States or in an area of U.S. imperial influence and how natural resources intersect with race,...
Chicano Studies 174AC: “Chicanos, the Law, and the Criminal Justice System” situates itself within an abolitionist paradigm to understand the connections between Chicano, Latino, and migrant urbanization, race, poverty, state violence, and the criminal justice system. The project for this course asked students, as groups, to select a topic or theme that they wanted to engage and to create a Spark presentation introducing the topic, as well as produce a podcast on the chosen topic or theme.
This course covers the entire history of the Chinese in the U.S., from the Gold Rush period in the mid-l9th century to the present. Since Chinese immigration and exclusion are two continuous processes throughout this history, both will be the focus of the course. The two processes and their interaction with each other also generated considerable political, economic, and cultural dynamism in the settlement and development of the Chinese American community throughout the U.S. Adding to the complexity of the two processes and the community dynamics has been the continuous impact of the...
Each year, approximately 10 faculty from a wide variety of disciplines are selected to participate in the Creative Discovery Fellows program. Faculty participate in a year-long developmental program that includes a 3-day Institute, monthly cohort meetings, and various workshops, as well as individual consultations with media and pedagogy experts. During implementation, their students also receive support in the form of workshops, in-class demonstrations, individual consultations, group feedback, online resources, and tutorials.
[The CDF program] is very valuable. We tend to do the same old stuff in our classes—exam, paper, exam, paper, repeat. This only taps into certain sets of skills. While these assignments develop valuable academic skills, students often have much more they can bring to their class experience. For a certain type of student (and teacher!) who feel constrained by the limits of traditional assignments and classroom protocols, the [Creative Discovery Fellows] program is quite freeing in providing institutional support for trying something new.
Message from Dr. Pablo Gonzalez, Lead Editor of