Office of Academic Insight launches Bright Idea seed grant program to improve student outcomes

As part of AUBURNACHIEVE, the university’s next Quality Enhancement Plan, the Office of Academic Insight, or OAI, has announced a new rolling seed grant opportunity designed to improve first destination outcomes for students.

Open to departments, colleges and offices, the Bright Idea seed grants pair units with educational researchers in OAI’s Insight Lab to assess and improve student career outcomes such as employment, continuing education enrollment, compensation and funding, and satisfaction. In addition, the Bright Idea grants provide analytical support and funding to implement projects for those units that strive to improve students’ ability to articulate the relevance of their academic and co-curricular experiences.

Students cultivate many employable skills throughout their time at Auburn. However, many students might not be fully aware of the potential competitive advantage of these skills. An essential component of improving first destination outcomes is ensuring students can articulate how their co-curricular activities have given them the skills and abilities to succeed in a prospective organization or graduate school. Each project should aim to elevate the Auburn student experience and enable educational programs, departments, colleges and offices to be more strategic in preparing students for post-Auburn careers.

As part of the grant, units will work with representatives from the Insight Lab to assess quantitative and qualitative data to understand current student achievement and career outcomes better. Though not required, units may focus their proposals on equity gaps to achieve first destination career outcome success. The full RFP is available on the OAI website.

In preparation for the proposal process, the Insight Lab will host a series of information sessions about AUBURNACHIEVE and the Bright Idea seed grant opportunity. Lab members will present information about AUBURNACHIEVE and allow attendees to ask questions about the Bright Idea proposal process.

Information Sessions will be held on the following dates:

Please register in advance by clicking here.

Virtual session on Thursday, April 7, 10:30 a.m.-11:30 a.m. 

In-person session on Wednesday, April 13, 10:30 a.m.-11:30 a.m. 

In-person session on Tuesday, April 19, 2 p.m.-3 p.m.

In addition, The Office of Inclusion and Diversity has partnered with OAI to offer a related lunch and learn titled, “An Overview on Student Achievement through a Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion Lens.”  The lunch and learn will be offered on April 11 and April 12 from 11 a.m. to noon in Room 2143 of the Brown-Kopel Student Achievement Center. A full description will be featured soon.

For more information about the Bright Idea seed grants, please email Katie Boyd, director of the Office of Academic Insight.