EDI Faculty Grants

EDI Faculty Grants are open to UNSW professional and academic staff from all Faculties and UNSW Canberra. 

After reading the guidelines, apply by sending your completed application form to access_equity_inclusion@unsw.edu.au. Applications are open from 14 November 2023 to 16 February 2024.  

A panel made up of the Deputy Vice-Chancellor, Equity Diversity & Inclusion; Director, Access, Equity and Inclusion; Pro Vice-Chancellor, Education & Student Experience; and two faculty EDI committee representatives.

Applications will be ranked based on their eligibility and fulfilment of the selection criteria (see EDI Faculty Grant guidelines).

No, you are welcome to apply as an individual, but we do encourage collaborations between professional and academic staff where possible to encourage expansive thinking and innovation.

We encourage EDI faculty grants that are designed to: 

• support teaching and learning initiatives that intend to positively impact students’ university experience, engagement, and success.  

• support projects that will build student and staff capacity for promoting a respectful culture and practising inclusivity in their work, study, and interactions.  

• support existing programs/units of study as well as new projects/activities with potential for expansion and implementation across schools or faculties. 

The funds can be used for any goods or services that support the initiative outlined in your grant application, including salaries (e.g., research assistants).

Any unspent funds by March 2024 or July 2024 will be returned to Access, Equity and Inclusion and EDI Operations.

The intellectual property created will remain with the grant winner. However, we do require that you/your team present your project findings and outcomes at either the December 2024 EDI Board meeting, or a separate showcase event that may align to other Division of EDI programming.

Access, Equity and Inclusion and EDI Operations will provide funding. AEI will also provide reporting templates and guidelines for the final project showcase in 2024.

Please email access_equity_inclusion@unsw.edu.au. We are happy to answer any questions on the EDI Faculty Grants scheme.

About the project:

‘ADA Stories: Reimagining Inclusion on Campus’ aims to tackle issues of empowerment, equity, systems, services, health and climate. Key outputs include the intersectional mapping of campus experiences with a strong focus on co-creation and participatory design with students of diverse lived experience. The project seeks to promote empowerment through art and expression to reshape campus spaces and cultivate allyship across UNSW, by producing community-led events and inclusive practices and policies, as well as by enabling student-led advocacy. 

Project team: Emma Peters, Emma Kirby, Josh Wiesberger

Faculty: Arts, Design & Architecture

Award amount: $16,252

About the project:

‘“Everyone’s business”: Building Capacity in Master of Public Health’ seeks to support MPH staff in their journey to embed best practice training in First Nations’ cultural safety across core courses as well as enable staff to create and invite students to actively build learning environments that are respectful of all cultural differences and that are inclusive of First Nations’ experiences and knowledge, and free from racism. Ultimately, the project supports collaboration between Indigenous stakeholders and communities and MPH academic staff to inform the development of a new Program Learning Outcome (PLO) on First Nations cultural safety in the MPH.

Project team: Niamh Stephenson, Katrina Blazek, Timothy Dobbins, Anita Heywood, Peter Malouf, Sally Nathan, Sophie Pitt 

Faculty: Medicine & Health  

Award amount: $20,000 

About the project:

The First Nations Engineering Science Society is conceived with the objective to create a society that supports, inspires and engages current and future First Nations students within the Faculty of Engineering and Faculty of Science. The project critically endeavours to link culture and technology, hand-in-hand for the betterment of UNSW students, fostering an understanding and appreciation of Indigenous history and tools, and as such, culminates in the development of boomerang-powered drones. 

Project team: Sonya Brown, Sarah Grundy, Tyson Namok, Isabella Zdravkovic, Harry Brotherhood 

Faculty: Engineering  

Award amount: $10,000 

About the project:

Building on work involving big data analytics that monitored the performance of students and offered them targeted support to ensure retention and success, the aim of ‘Education support to make students shine’ is to give all students equal opportunities in Electrical Engineering. The project will do this by expanding existing open laboratories and student drop-in centres, as well as by fostering universal design learning (UDL) practices, mapping existing instructional material and approaches that align with UDL in two large key courses in Electrical Engineering (ELEC1111 and ELEC2134), and using the UDL framework to adapt additional instructional material and approaches that do not align with UDL to increase student engagement and satisfaction.  

Project team: Dr. Inma Tomeo-Reyes, Roy Zeng 

Faculty: Engineering 

Award amount: $10,000 

Project team: Dr Laura McKemmish, Dr Laura McKnight 

Faculty: Science

Award amount: $20,000

Project team: Dr Inmaculada Tomeo-Reyes, Mr Roy Zeng, Dr Arash Khatamianfar 

Faculty: Engineering

Award amount: $20,000

Project team: Terry Cumming, Ian McArthur, Karen Kriss, Karin Watson, Veronica Jiang 

Faculty: Arts, Design & Architecture

Award amount: $25,924

Project team: Dr Sara Kyne, Dr Laura McKemmish, Dr Lauren McKnight 

Faculty: Science

Award amount: $19,605

Project team: Mr Chris Pearce, Professor Tracie Barber, Associate Professor Greg Smith 

Faculty: Law & Justice, Engineering, Medicine & Health

Award amount: $3,000

Project team: Nicholas Stevens, Sarah White 

Faculty: Business

Award amount: $3,000