Student-Led Project Criteria

Students who apply as a Project Lead must also submit a project proposal. Projects supported by the Global Impact Fellows program must:

• Articulate a goal or outcome that ties into at least one of the UC Davis Global Learning Outcomes and at least one of the UN Sustainable Development Goals.
• Be designed in such a way that it impacts not only the students participating in the project, but also other UC Davis students and/or the greater UCD community including community partners and collaborators.
• Be completely student-led, with as-needed guidance from a faculty or staff mentor and accountability check-ins from the assigned Program Coordinator.

Current Projects

Beyond the Classroom: Experiential Learning Through Global Service

Student Lead: Sabrina Speckman

This project’s goal is to create a cross-cultural exchange program where students in Davis provide opportunities to improve English language skills (both written and verbal), to children in rural Medellin, Colombia, offering both communities valuable education and leadership opportunities. I aim to provide Davis students with a deeper understanding of global issues through hands-on engagement, leadership development, and fundraising experience. All of this can enable Colombian children to learn English in an engaging manner which is a prevalent tool, especially in opening up their opportunities to engage in better paying jobs within touristed areas.

UN SDG Symposium at UC Davis

Student Lead: Judith Eppele

The inaugural SDG Symposium strives to address the lack of student awareness surrounding the UN Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs), while also developing the capacity of attendees to pursue actionable change around the goals in their current and future work. The SDGs provide a clear framework for how to make specific and substantial progress towards environmental prosperity, which while incredibly valuable is unfortunately overlooked in many US-based spaces. The SDG Symposium will cover each of the 17 SDGs in a variety of ways to provide educational opportunities for attendees to engage with the goals. It aims to foster the skills and confidence necessary for attendees to take local action, such as through information booths geared towards each of the goals, panels, Q&As, and more. The Symposium will be open to undergraduate and graduate students, as well as faculty and staff, thereby created with the intention of engaging the entire campus community.

Cross Cultural Communication Series

Student Lead: Jia Yu Liou

This project intends to develop the Global Cross-Cultural Communication Series curriculum student team and specific syllabus that was developed by last year’s Project Amazon Link using a COIL format and by brainstorming ideas that will be used in the online series. This year, the team will revise the created curriculum and strengthen it to attract students interested in cross-cultural communication and solving global challenges. They plan to work closely with collaborators of Global Affairs to find potential partners that are interested in hosting the Global Cross-Cultural communication series and collaborate with campus partners to find applications for the curriculum. The goal of this series is to amplify knowledge related to cross-cultural communication and integrate global perspectives for problem solving during group discussions.

The Global Price Initiative

Student Lead: Jeff Cheung

This project intends to compile an unprecedented historical dataset of advertisement-level prices by systematically scanning and analyzing digitized newspapers worldwide from 1850 to the present. Project members will actively engage in scanning and processing these archival newspapers, utilizing advanced artificial intelligence and cloud computing technologies to construct a comprehensive open-access database on global price trends that enriches economic research and informs policy debates on global economic development and inequality. The project will engage and train student researchers, equipping them with skills in AI, cloud computing, and economic analysis, fostering future leaders in sustainability-driven fields. By preserving historical data and making it publicly accessible, this project advances data sustainability, financial stability, and equitable growth—key pillars of UC Davis Global Learning Outcomes.

Latine Co-Lab: Co-Creating Linguistic Justice through Plain Language and Design

Student Lead: Angelica Gonzalez Bastidas

Through the Global Impact Fellows program, the Latine Co-Lab: Co-Creating Linguistic Justice through Plain Language and Critical Language Awareness will grow by training new leaders, offering hands-on workshops, and creating bilingual documents that help families understand their rights, access services, and feel included. This student-led initiative transforms complex institutional documents into accessible, bilingual Spanish-English versions by integrating Plain Language, Critical Language Awareness, and Legal Design principles through a proven methodology. First, community members conduct "mystery shopper" fieldwork, auditing documents using five SERVQUAL dimensions: (1) Tangibles: Language Clarity, (2) Reliability: Information Consistency, (3) Responsiveness: Service Accessibility, (4) Assurance: Trust and Understanding, and (5) Empathy: Cultural and Linguistic Adaptation. Then, we collaboratively transform them using clear, culturally appropriate language. Participants come away more aware of their linguistic rights and more confident to speak up when language is a barrier. This project equips participants to become culturally responsive leaders who advance equity through language.

TeachUp: Elevating Teaching Confidence & Communication For All

Student Leads: Davrina Rianda and Iliya Giyahchi

TeachUp aims to help first-time graduate teaching assistants (TAs), international graduate TAs, and TAs with public speaking anxiety become more effective and confident educators in the US academic, intercultural settings. This project will be implemented as part of the UC Davis Professors for the Future program. To achieve its goal, TeachUp combines peer mentoring and kick-off workshop series, which will cover strategies to navigate teaching dynamics and activating lectures in intercultural settings, and utilizing improv theater for building teaching confidence.  The project group will develop the various project components in collaboration with different UC Davis campus partners. 

Past Projects

Global Aggies Near and Far Podcast

Dedicated to promoting cultural literacy and international collaboration through a student-created podcast, this team fosters global education and connection at UC Davis by creating a virtual space for UC Davis students, faculty, staff, and community members to share international and national experiences and research. Opportunities are available for students to learn about podcast production and create podcasts available to the public that showcase diverse cultural backgrounds and different UC Davis student experiences. Podcast episodes are available on Spotify, Apple Podcasts, and Stitcher.

One Health Symposium

This annual, daylong symposium, hosted by the One Health Institute and Students for One Health, brings together students and professionals in veterinary, medical and environmental fields to join interactive discussions, poster presentations and networking on a variety of topics impacting the health of animals, people, plants and the environment. This team will focus on both resource creation and leadership training through the process of large-scale symposium planning and execution, with a focus on the UN's Sustainable Development Goals. This project work will support the continuous execution of OHS for years to come, with a specific goal to improve student engagement with the event and collaboration with global communities.

ParaDocX

The ParaDocX project spans the domains of design, computer science, informatics, international relations and other related disciplines to contribute on a health-related project: the development of a new electronic medical record (EMR) system. This system is designed with a dual focus: enhancing educational opportunities for future clinicians (including those in nursing, medicine, physical therapy, dentistry, and social work) and implementing technological advancements in free clinics, which have historically been overlooked in the realm of digital healthcare solutions. The immediate goal is to develop a minimal viable product, that can be implemented within the various student run clinics here at UC Davis. Once proven to be efficient, the program is planned to be provided and deployed in various languages for global use. 

Creating and Distributing Multilingual Resources

This project team aims to create resources on campus and online available in different languages so that international students, undocumented students, immigrant students, and those whose first language isn’t English can feel more accepted on campus and more easily understand what is available to them. Research shows that seeing other languages in public spaces, especially the language(s) one speaks, promotes an environment of inclusion. UC Davis prides itself on its global diversity, with international students from over 140 countries. This suggests that many students would benefit from having and seeing resources in languages other than English.

Project Amazon Link: A Cross-Cultural Collaboration for Sustainable Applications in Plant Biotechnology

Project Amazon Link (PAL) is a virtual exchange course designed to connect students from diverse backgrounds to discuss agricultural challenges and biotech and learn from students with different cultural points of view. The pilot session of this course connected student participants from UC Davis, Universidad San Francisco de Quito in Ecuador, and Universidade de São Paulo in Brazil. This course is based in the Department of Plant Biology; course objectives span improving both technical knowledge in plant biology as well as soft skills around intercultural communication and leadership. PAL's goal for the Global Impact Fellows is to assemble a multidisciplinary team to enhance the intercultural exchange elements of the curriculum.

Discovering Academia

Discovering Academia is a podcast project launched in January 2023 by Brent Valentine and Keller Kramer. In their episodes, they discuss a variety of research topics across all academic disciplines with researchers from around the world. They have recorded in-person interviews in the United States, United Kingdom, Netherlands, France, Switzerland, Singapore, Indonesia, Hong Kong and Mainland China. By recording podcast episodes, they hope to achieve their mission of providing educational resources to promote curiosity about current research and make academia more accessible to undergraduate students. As a growing, multidisciplinary team, they plan to focus on facilitating growth in their audience and the educational resources they provide.

Simulating the California Food System

Yolo County experiences a higher prevalence of food insecurity than California or the United States as a whole. By providing food to over 30,000 households per month through public and private donations and in partnership with 68 local organizations, Yolo Food Bank is a key resource for food insecure individuals and families in the county. Because the past few years have seen reductions in governmental funding support for nonprofits, including Yolo Food Bank, there is a need for increased donor and volunteer engagement in order to continue operating at the same capacity. In collaboration with Yolo Food Bank, this project seeks to identify the most promising untapped target audiences for donor and volunteer outreach and engagement efforts and determine effective messaging strategies to reach each audience. Their work seeks to understand drivers and barriers to learning about and participating in desired behaviors, media consumption habits, and effective messaging frames and message elements for acquisition and retention of these new target audiences. Their research will be used in Yolo Food Bank’s summer 2025 strategic planning.

Student Farming Around the World

In partnership with Katharina Ullman, director of the Student Farm in the Agricultural Sustainability Institute at UC Davis, student participating in this project are sparking global conversations among student farmers at UC Davis, Universidade Estadual de Maringá - Núcleo de e Desenvolvimento Sustentável in Brazil, Universidad de Talca in Chile, and Mohammed VI Polytechnic University in Morocco. The aim is to advance a global network of student-led farms and gardens, cultivating passion for sustainable agriculture, sharing knowledge, and making friends around the world—all while empowering students. Additionally, there is a goal to raise awareness and provide opportunities for students to engage with the United Nations Sustainable Development Goals. This team is in the process of organizing their 2nd annual Global Student Farm Symposium and hopes to coordinate more with faculty members to create additional opportunities for engagement between students from all partner universities.

Resources for International Students who are Teaching Assistants

This project works to understand the challenges faced by international graduate student TAs at UC Davis. As part of the project, students organize mentored discussion events and maintain an online resource (with a focus, this year, on mental health).