Social Innovation Fellows (SIF) is the anchor program of NC State Social Innovation and Entrepreneurship. This year-long, team-based learning experience creates opportunities for students and the broader community to build the skills, self awareness, cultural competence, and connections to understand and solve complex social problems. Each team of fellows focuses on one of the 17 United Nations Sustainable Development Goals (UN SDGs). 

Team Zero Hunger works with their mentor, Andrew DiMeo, and community partner, Catholic Parish Outreach Food Pantry, to analyze their sustainable development goal within the context of North Carolina families. The group employed systems thinking and stakeholder mapping to attempt to understand why food insecurity happens. Moving forward, the group plans to tour Sankofa Farms to further understand the systemic issues behind hunger. The team wants to employ human-centered design to address both indirect and direct solutions for food insecurity in North Carolina.

Students in a Special Topics Design Course (ID 492) use their design skills to make an impact in the local community by working in teams led by IBM professionals. Students work with local non-profits to understand and solve problems the non-profits face. Utilizing design thinking, the students re-envision the experiences and value the non-profits provide for the communities they serve. Throughout the semester, students present their ideas to nonprofit stakeholders, professional designers, and peers to receive feedback in order to develop the most effective solutions. The final presentation takes place at an end-of-semester gala.

In the Spring of 2022, students partnered with an Interfaith Prison Ministry for Women, Foster Families Alliance of North Carolina, and are collaborating with the North Carolina Judicial Branch on an initiative to promote virtual court hearings.

Design students and faculty working in the studio spaces in Leazer, 26 July 2019, Copyright NC State University

Each semester, the Nonprofit Leadership and Development course provides students with opportunities to gain hands-on experience by providing necessary services, fundraising, and professional development with numerous organizations representing myriad causes across the sector. Lecturer Melinda ("Miss Mindy") Sopher collaborates with dozens of nonprofit agencies in the Greater Triangle Area and undergraduate students at NC State. Every student dedicates over 30 hours per semester, building connections between academic content and real-world skills and issues. In the 12 years that Professor Sopher has offered the course, her students have demonstrated the power of NC State's motto "Think and Do" while raising over $3 million for local organizations in need!

During Spring Semester 2022, students partnered with:

• Dementia Alliance of North Carolina
• Kay Yow Cancer Fund
• KidzNotes
• Live It Up Hillsborough
• Marbles Kids Museum
• Our Wave
• Rotary Youth Exchange
• Rusty's Rescue Ranch
• Student Basic Needs Coalition
• Team Drea
• United Arts Council

NC State's Office of Research and Innovation, in partnership with the Kenan Institute for Engineering, Technology, and Science, awarded Dr. Christopher Galik funding through the Research and Innovation Seed Funding (RISF) program. Dr. Galik's interdisciplinary work bridges policy, energy, and sustainability in partnership with the Clean Energy Technology Center and colleagues in the Department of Civil, Construction, and Environmental Engineering. His RISF proejct will contribute to transparent, well-defined policy benchmarks that will help measure emissions reduction and allow for stonger energy modeling practices. 

Michelle Jewell, the Applied Ecology Department's Chief Science Communicator, co-teaches an Applied Science Communications course for undergradaute and graduate students at NC State. Each semester, students develop projects focused on communicating important research projects and findings with the general public. Students devote approximately 10 hours per semester on work that culminates in public health brochures, online videos, and digital campaigns. Past projects include brochures on testing water quality, reporting algea blooms, and more. 

Image by Flickr is licensed by CC BY-NC 2.0

Dr. Knollenberg and an all-female team including professors, a science writer, a coastal economics specialist, and an undergraduate intern identified shellfish mariculture and tourism synergies and used this information to propose a mariculture tourism development process to aid in developing the North Carolina Oyster Trail (NCOT). The NCOT offers interactive expriences related to oyster consumption and production which participants can view in an online map. 

Their objectives inlcuded qualitatively measuring shellfish mariculture tourism, quantitatively measuring demand for shellfish mariculture tourism experiences, and comparing shellfish mariculture tourism supply and demand. After these measurements were taken, they identified, promoted, and evaluated preliminary shellfish mariculture tourism experiences based on this supply and demand comparism. Next, they refined strategies for shellfish mariculture tourism experience development using additional demand data and evaluation of preliminary experiences. In the final step of their research process, they established reousrces to support recommended shellfish mariculture tourism experience development strategies.

Photo credit: Justin Case

The Center for Community and Family Engagement (CFACE) collaborates with, and receives funding from, North Carolina Department of Health and Human Services to provide training and program implementation support for child welfare services workers and their partners toward improving services to families and communities around child safety issues. During the month of February 2022, the center hosted a training event focused on providing information, skills, and practice opportunities to agency workers responsible for providing parenting skills, resources, family counseling services, youth focused programs, etc. to parents and children across the state.  

This training event titled, Connecting Families: Family Support in Practice, covered a six day period near the end of the month. Thirty workers were enrolled, representing 16 different agencies and over 10 counties from across the state.  Workers actively participated in training online using the Zoom platform, printed workbooks, homework, and self reflective exercises. 

There will be another offering of this training held between July and December 2022.

As manager of NC State's Dunn Lab in the Department of Applied Ecology. Lauren Nichols supports the lab's ongoing partnership with iNaturalist's Never Home Alone project. This citizen science platform encourages global communities to photograph and share images of diverse species in home environments. Through images, scientists and academics understand the indoor habits of myriad insects and the food webs and ecosystems that sustain them. As this project progresses, the Department of Applied Ecology will use iNaturalist's database to complete research on the global lives of indoor insects. 

Image by Wikimedia Commons is licensed under CC BY-SA 4.0.

NC State staff provide health and safety training for farmworkers on a variety of topics including COVID-19 and vaccine education, pesticide safety, heat stress, and green tobacco illness. Trainings take place at farms, Extension offices, and community settings in Blade, Beaufort, Catawba, Duplin, Edgecombe, Henderson, Johnston, Moore, Nash, Pender, Sampson, Wayne, and Wilson counties.

The farmworker health and safety trainings are an important part of NC State Extension's Farmworkers Health and Safety Comprehensive Education Program. The Farmworkers Health and Safety Comprehensive Education Program improves workforce health and safety and promotes preventative behaviors among farmworkers, farmworkers' employers, and their families.  

Dr. Jane Hoppin partners with Dr. Berna van Wendel de Joode of the Universidad Nacional in Heredia, Costa Rica to study the health effects of pesticide exposure in women and children who reside in banana growing regions. Their project explores how pesticide exposure affects respiratory health, allergies, and neurobehavioral outcomes and development. To increase access to information regarding exposure risks and the study, Dr. Hoppin and Dr. Berna van Wendel de Joode create materials in Spanish and English and distribute them to teachers and other school partners in the region. In 2018, their work received a grant to extend this study for an additional five years, allowing them to research ongoing health issues in a cohort of women and children. 

Image by Wikimedia Commons is licencsed under CC BY-SA 3.0.

Dr. Jeffrey Reaser and Dr. Walt Wolfram developed Voices of North Carolina, an 8th-grade dialect-awareness curriculum. Created in 2005, this state-approved social studies curriculum uses mutli-media lessons that teachers across the state can use to teach students the importance of dialect diversity and the relationship between language, history, and culture. Dr. Reaser and Dr. Wolfram designed the curriculum as a free, readily available set of lessons and activites that 8th-grade teachers can implement without any prior experience with sociolinguistics. The curriculum contains over 450 minutes of instruction activities aimed at reducing dialect discrimination and cultivating a respect for all ways of speaking. 

Dr. Aaron Hipp and Postdoc Jing-Huei Huang led a research initiative to develop data-informed interactive playspace maps with the goal of providing information to reduce playspace inequity. The first step of the research process involved a literature review of equitable access to play spaces. Next, researchers gathered data on existing public play spaces in two rural and one urban area of Colorado, including play spaces in public parks, public schools, and public housing. An external partner then provided assessments on the quality of these playspaces, and researchers used this information to build an interactive map and dashboard to disseminate the data found.

This study aims to identify playspace inequity and to work with community individuals to understand what kind of playspaces they would like in their neighborhoods. Community individuals were able to voice their opinions regarding playground usage and likes/dislikes of existing spaces through Streetwyze and surveys.

Image: Paul, K. (2021, December 20). KABOOM! Launches Playspace Mapping Program in Colorado. KABOOM!

Wicked Problems, Wolfpack Solutions is a multidisciplinary experience created for all incoming first-year and transfer students and their families. Each year, this course focuses on a current "wicked problem," defined as a highly complex problem that can only be addressed through collaborative, multidisciplinary efforts. The free course explores possible solutions through the perspectives of NC State scholars representing many different areas of study and reflects NC State's commitment to the inclusion of individuals and ideas from a broad diversity of backgrounds and experiences. The videos and podcasts from the course are openly accessible to K-12 educators, prospective students and their families, alumni, and the general public as an educational resource and showcase of NC State work.

In 2020, the focus of Wicked Problems, Wolfpack Solutions is Pandemics. In this course, students consider the history, biology, and societal impacts of pandemics like COVID-19, and discover how NC State faculty in many different areas are contributing to solutions to this wicked problem. Students learn directly from NC State faculty who contribute to diverse solutions around the world and can earn two general education course credits for free by participating.

Image courtesy of NC State University, 2022.

Graduate level students in the School of Social work complete year-long internships, totaling 672 hours of service to communities across North Carolina each year. Field placements allow students to practice social work skills under the guidance and supervision of NC State faculty, field supervisors, and experienced social workers. These experiences encourage students to develop, implement, and evaluate social interventions while preparing students to engage in culturally-responsive and equity-driven practices. The School of Social Work partners with hundreds of nonprofits, school districts, health centers, state agencies, community organizations, and more to provide students with high-quality, applied learning opportunities. 

In the academic year 2021-2022, students in NC State’s Master of Social Work (MSW) worked with Oak City Cares. Oak City Cares provides neighborhood-centered supportive services addressing homelessness. They rely on trusting relationships to connect clients to services designed to help them achieve stable housing. Social work students provided myriad services to clients, including intake assessments; case management; client registration; assisting with the call center; homeless prevention and diversion with clients; attending partner agency meetings; and supporting the weekend meal program.