At Texas Immersive Institute, The mission is to create responsible, responsive, and remarkable solutions through the power of immersive storytelling. We empower artists, scientists, and humanists with access to cutting-edge technology and research to design experiences that address significant challenges.
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.
The Education and Outreach Directorate at the Texas Advanced Computing Center provides K-20 programming to address 21st-century workforce development needs. This includes STEM summer camps for middle school and high school students, research experiences for undergraduate students and educators, fellowships, internships, and public outreach.
Cumbre Kids produce children's STEM podcasts that reach 130,000 Spanish-speaking families. Their programs feature researchers answering questions submitted by children 3-10 years old. Cumbre Kids has worked with the McDonald Observatory at UT Austin, as well as dozens of universities, federal agencies, museums, and more.
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).
The Lab for Immersive Media (LIM) is a high tech interactive and immersive media laboratory that enables novel research and entertainment experiences in virtual and physical space. A key goal of the LIM is to broaden research impact through partnerships, public engagement, and unique collaborations between art and science.
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 Open Source Program Office (OSPO) offers training and individualized support for faculty, students, and staff who want to grow their software efforts into healthy open source projects. The UT OSPO provides consultation and training on how best to contribute to existing projects, facilitates relationships with other organizational units, offers training, personalized consultations, a lecture series, a help desk network, publishing of best practices, and events that help students, faculty, and staff engage with open source software.
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.
Living Learning Communities (LLCs) are residential communities that introduce and integrate academic and social learning through faculty/staff involvement and holistic education. Students living in LLCs live together in the same area of a residence hall and share experiences that reinforce the theme of their LLCs. LLCs provide students and faculty opportunities for connection outside the classroom and support networking across common interests.