— Fellowships in Engaged Learning —

About the program

The Fellowships in Engaged Learning program is designed to help inspire CHASS faculty and graduate students who want to build hands-on, research-based learning into their undergraduate teaching. Studios. Field projects. Community partnerships. Translation workshops. Undergraduates working with archival collections, oral histories, datasets, performances, neighborhoods. The aim is to create research opportunities for undergraduates at any stage of their studies.

UCR is an R1 and an AAU university. But most humanities undergraduates do not get hands-on research experience until they have finished most of their coursework, and there are few openings for students who simply want to try it: to learn a technique, to work closely with an instructor or professor, to find out whether research is something they want to explore further. The two Engaged Learning fellowship opportunities are built to widen that opening, and to do it across departments.

Faculty at all ranks and graduate students at all stages are welcome; no prior experience with undergraduate research is required, only an interest in trying it.

Where it all started

The Fellowship grows out of the History Lab, a course that puts undergraduates to work directly with archival and digital collections. It began in Winter 2025 as a single experiment: in partnership with UCR Special Collections, students chose from thirty-two single-box collections, each one small enough that a single undergraduate could take responsibility for the whole thing. Find a collection. Control your box. Explore it, contextualize it, corroborate it, present it.

The Lab now runs every quarter, each time around a different problem — this Fall, a lab on AI and History — in partnership with the Library’s digital and teaching librarians, and this Winter and Spring in partnership with Special Collections.

The premise of the Fellowship program is that the model is not just about history. Studios, field projects, community partnerships, translation workshops, mentored research groups: the shape changes by department, the principle doesn’t.

The working groups

Each fellow comes with a course idea or program in mind that they would like to build around undergraduate research and engaged learning. The faculty and graduate cohorts will explore the theory and pedagogy of undergraduate engagement, but will also create working models for courses.

Faculty Cohort: Faculty fellows meet two to three times per quarter over a meal to workshop those courses and programs in progress, with one or two additional presentations from invited speakers — faculty at other institutions who have built successful undergraduate research programs, along with campus partners. Alongside the pedagogical questions, the group will take up the practical obstacles that usually stall this kind of teaching: enrollment minimums, teaching-load credit, student recruitment, funding, and assessment.

Graduate Cohort: Graduate fellows meet one to two times per quarter over a provided meal to work through their course designs together. At the end of the year, each fellow presents their working course and assignment ideas to the group. The result is a syllabus for a course built around undergraduate research — designed to be taught, or ready to propose to a department that has not offered one like it. Assignments, too: the exercises that make a research course work are often harder to design than the reading list.

Participation awards

At the conclusion of the fellowship year, fellows receive $1000 in research support funds. These funds may be used to support undergraduate engagement through professional development (training, workshops, conference presentations), course enhancement materials (collection access, digitization, supplies, site visits), or other research needs related to engaged learning.

Impact for students

The experience of conducting research is amplified with an audience. Each spring the program closes with a student research showcase: students who have participated in faculty fellows’ labs present their research with posters and public presentations, alongside UCR’s existing undergraduate research community. The showcase is also how the program stays honest. Courses are designed and implemented; students present what those courses actually taught them.

Program timeline

Year one: build the cohorts.
Recruit the first groups of fellows, run the meeting series across the academic year, bring in an outside speaker, and hold the first spring showcase. The History Lab continues each quarter as the working example.

Year two: build the courses.
A second cohort, with the first faculty cohort’s courses moving into the curriculum. The emphasis shifts from design to implementation: getting courses approved, enrolled, staffed, and credited.

Year three: make it durable.
A third cohort, an external evaluation of what the program has changed for students and for faculty teaching loads, and the groundwork for continuing the model past the initial funding — through a standing CIS fellowship and through recurring course listings in participating departments.

Get involved

Call for Participants
Interest form

Questions or for more information: Alejandra Dubcovsky (alejandra.dubcovsky@ucr.edu) or Katharine Henshaw (katharine.henshaw@ucr.edu)

Sponsored by the Patricia McSweeny McCauley Chair in Teaching Excellence and hosted by the Center for Ideas and Society.