By Katie Grant, Office of Research & Scholarship

The UW–Madison School of Education is proud to announce the selection of 18 projects for funding through the One School Innovation Fund, a competitive internal program designed to catalyze bold, collaborative research and scholarship across the arts, education, and health.

Launched earlier this year by the Office of Research & Scholarship and Dean Marcelle Haddix, the fund was intentionally designed to encourage scholars to think expansively about how their work can address complex social and cultural challenges while advancing the Wisconsin Idea, innovation, and the One School approach. The request for applications was written broadly to welcome proposals from all disciplines and methodological approaches, ensuring strong participation from throughout the School. In total, 71 proposals representing 15 units were reviewed; a clear signal of the depth of innovation and engagement across the School community.

To support different stages of project development, the fund offered two distinct funding mechanisms: Seed awards for early-stage, exploratory ideas, and Engage awards for more developed projects poised to expand partnerships, external funding potential, or public impact.

The review process was designed to be rigorous, fair, and aligned with best practices used in external funding competitions. All submissions first underwent administrative review to ensure completeness and technical compliance. Proposals that met those requirements were then reviewed independently by two subject-matter experts — 102 reviewers from 52 unique departments in total — using rubrics adapted from federal grant review criteria. Reviewer impact scores were combined and considered alongside synthesized feedback to identify the strongest proposals.

Building on this foundation, the highest-ranking proposals across both funding mechanisms and domains — five Seed and 13 Engage proposals — advanced to an additional round of review. A committee carefully considered these submissions, emphasizing projects that embodied a “One School” approach and elevating proposals that demonstrated meaningful collaboration across departments and units. The committee also evaluated the potential for the work to attract future funding or enhance the School’s national reputation in the arts and assessed whether the budgets were reasonable and feasible.

Following committee deliberations, Associate Dean for Research Dorothy Farrar-Edwards and Research Strategy Director Hanna Blazel conducted a final review of rankings and budget requests. This step focused on identifying opportunities to maximize the impact within the fund’s $1 million allocation, including working with selected principal investigators to refine project scopes or reduce budgets where appropriate. This collaborative process helped ensure that as many high-quality projects as possible could be supported.

The result is a diverse portfolio of 18 funded projects that reflect the creativity, rigor, and collaborative spirit of the School of Education.

Seed Grants:

• Elena Aydarova — “Science of Reading Reforms and the Emergence of Platform Governance”
• Rebecca Cors, Andrea Mason, and Kristen Pickett — “A Mixed-Methods Pilot Study of Fall Risk and Visual Search in Perimenopausal and Postmenopausal Women”
• Hailey Love — “Developing a Co-Design Process with Young Children”
• James Pustejovsky, Simon Goldberg, and Karl Rohe — “Accelerating Rigorous Evidence Synthesis for Education and Allied Social Sciences through Large Language Model-Assisted Screening and Data Extraction”
• Joelle Taknint and Matthew Wolfgram — “Community Mental Health and Well Being Needs Assessment: Promoting Migrant Mental Health in a Time of Restrictive Immigration Policy”

Engage Grants:

• Aly Amidei, Erica Halverson, Dan Lisowski, Micha Espinosa, Rob Wagner, and Ryan Bertelson — “Innovations in University Theatre Productions: Working at the Intersection of Art & Technology in Theatre-Making”
• Jill Barnes, Julie Stamm, Laura Eisenmenger, Oliver Wieben, and Andrew Alexander — “History of Exposure to Repetitive Head Impacts and the Impact on Vascular Health”
• Micha Espinosa, David Williamson Shaffer, and Shamya Karumbaiah — “The Compass”
• Baron Kelly, Carl Grant, and Ali Mansouri — “Pluralism in the Arts: Social Learning Through Art and Scholarship”
• Nancy Kendall, Roberto Abadie, Zikani Hawkins Waston Kanuda, Stella Makhuva, and Isaac Phiri — “Teaching, Learning, and Transforming: Community Responses to Polycrises in Malawi”
• Eun-Jeon Lee, Bradford Chin, and Jeffer Sasaki — “Movement for Life: A Virtual Dance and Well-Being Pilot to Improve Quality of Life after Spinal Cord Injury”
• Ran Liu and Zhenhua Zhu — “Transforming Industrialized Construction Education with Embodied Digital Twins”
• Jacob Meyer and Simon Goldberg — “Beyond the Boundaries of the Laboratory: Using Ecological Momentary Assessment (EMA) Methods for Detecting and Modeling the Anxiety-Reducing Effects of Resistance Exercise in Adults with Anxiety and Depression”
• Rosemary Russ, Matthew Wolfgram, and Christine Pribbenow — “Science Education and Workforce Development for Justice-Involved Populations”
• Susan Smedema, Eun-Jeon Lee, Jina Chun, Megan Baumunk, Kyesha Isadore, Susan Wiegmann, Sarah Lent, and Alessia Marigo — “Enhancing Clinical Supervision Capacity in Rehabilitation Counseling through an AI-Driven Training Model — Preliminary Tool Development and Proof of Concept”
• Julie Stamm and Kristen Pickett — “Hidden Deficits: Dual-Task Costs in Gait and Daily Function After Sport-Related Repetitive Head Impacts and Concussion in Collegiate Club Sport Athletes”
• Rachel Williams — “Complicating the ‘County Advantage’: Black Geographies of County Secession in the U.S. South”
• Matthew Wolfgram and Bailey Smolarek — “Student-Engaged Participatory Research (PAR) Training Institute”

“These projects exemplify the kind of innovative, collaborative work the One School Innovation Fund was created to support,” said Haddix. “We are excited to invest in ideas that not only advance scholarship but also strengthen connections across our School and position our faculty and academic staff for future impact.”

Awards officially begin July 1, 2026. Funded teams will receive post-award support and will be invited to share progress and outcomes at a future School of Education Research Day. Annual reporting will also help track the impact of these investments, including future funding, partnerships, and scholarly outputs.

While only a subset of proposals could be funded, the review committee noted the exceptional quality and promise across all submissions. Proposals that were not selected for funding will receive a summary of reviewer feedback and are encouraged to continue developing their ideas and to pursue additional funding opportunities with support from the Office of Research & Scholarship.