Research Impact Partners

The Center hosts a variety of education and outreach initiatives that can be leveraged in research proposals, e.g., the K-5 Research Experiences for Teachers program, Research Experiences for Undergraduates program, First Year Undergraduate Research Program: FUSE, Industrial Mentorship program for Graduate Students, Artist in Residence program, afterschool STEM clubs at local schools, and K-12 STEM outreach to the Texas School for the Deaf and Texas School for the Blind.

Connecting Research and Education At TExas (CREATE) was founded in 2017 through a partnership established between Dr. Sean T. Roberts at The University of Texas at Austin (UT) and Dr. Shawn M. Amorde at Austin Community College (ACC) with support from the National Science Foundation. CREATE’s initial goal was to improve community college student retention in the physical sciences by fostering mentorship relationships between ACC students and UT faculty through research projects tied to green energy. Over time, CREATE’s managing team has been broadened to include Dr. Emily Que (UT), Dr. Samantha Soebbing (ACC), Dr. Purna Murthy (ACC), and Dr. Huilang (Evan) Wang (UT) which has allowed its scope to expand into a range of areas in chemistry, molecular biosciences, physics, materials science, and engineering.

The Engineering Student Success Center provides special programming through workshops, student leadership opportunities and welcoming spaces that help all students have a wonderful experience to aid in positive educational outcomes.

The Environmental Science Institute (ESI) was founded as a multi-disciplinary institute for basic scientific research in environmental studies. The Institute serves as a focal point on campus for a wide scope of interdisciplinary research and teaching. ESI coordinates cross-departmental environmental science instruction; facilitates education and outreach in STEM fields; and disseminates advances in the area of enviromental science that are important locally and globally. ESI coordinates innovative educational outreach programs that work together to support awareness of science, technology, engineering and math, promost better communication of scientific research, and ultimately spark an interest in science and learning. Host Science - Cool Talks provides a front row seat to world-class research. Presented by ESI, this nationally recognized series allows leading researchers from UT and other prominent universities to share their passion about science, technology, engineering and math with the general public. Events are held six times a year (on-campus or virtually).

Horns Helping Horns is a program that provides students with financial support, professional development, mentorship, resource navigation, community, and one-on-one support/intervention with program coordinators as needed.

The Office of Undergraduate Research (OUR) connect PIs with undergraduate research assistants through our student advising and our online database of faculty research interests and projects (https://eureka.utexas.edu). OUR hosts Summer Research Scholars programming to support the professional development of undergraduate researchers taking part in summer research programs (e.g., NSF REUs), and offers a variety of student research funding opportunities and research presentation events to further the work and development of student researchers.

Public Interest Technology University Network (PIT-UN) is a collaboration of universities and colleges committed to developing curricula, research agendas, and experiential learning programs in public interest technology (PIT). PIT-UN helps advance the field of PIT and bring positive impact to communities around the globe by providing programming and funding for members to grow PIT on their campuses and communities.