New Student Engagement Fund

Applications must be vetted and approved by the chair(s) of an NSEB group and submitted by an NSEB member, and the project must be overseen and managed by one of NSEB’s groups.

If you are interested in applying for an award, please follow the steps below:

1. Stakeholder Discussions: Discuss your project with other campus stakeholders who might be interested in collaborating. Ensure that you’ve got a cross-campus team in place to implement the project if it is approved by the NSEB leadership team. Awards will not be given to teams representing a single school or administrative unit or to projects that already have guaranteed funding.
2. Group Chair Review: Discuss your idea with the chair(s) of your group or those of the group that is most closely aligned with the project you’re proposing (see the list below for contact information). The chair(s) must vet the idea and approve the project or else an application may not be submitted. These decisions are left to the discretion of the chair(s).
3. Application Submission: If vetted and approved by the chair(s) of a group, gather all necessary information, complete the form and submit the application for consideration.
4. Leadership Team Review: After review, the application will be sent to the chair(s) of the relevant group for verification, then forwarded to the NSEB leadership team and voted on at its next meeting.

The New Student Engagement Fund was created to provide seed money for cross-campus teams of administrators, faculty and students. Because they are grant funded, these awards will be reserved for proposals that satisfy one or more of the following outcomes from the university’s UT System-funded grant “Engagement through Mentorship, Collaboration and Service Learning.” Please review the full list of project outcomes at bottom prior to developing and submitting your application.

Some examples of grant-worthy initiatives might include:

• Creating new or newly redesigned events and experiences for incoming students (grant outcomes 2, 8, 10).
• Building tools to increase students’ knowledge of UT Dallas (grant outcomes 1, 5, 9).
• Designing new communication, marketing or public relations projects to aid students as they transition to UT Dallas (grant outcomes 1, 2, 3, 10).
• Expanding initiatives to boost student volunteerism and service learning across campus (grant outcomes 2, 8, 10, 11, 12, 13).
• Developing new systems or processes to assist with academic and co-curricular advising (grant outcomes 1, 4, 5, 6).
• Enhancing current mentoring initiatives or developing new mentorship events and opportunities (grant outcomes 2, 3, 4, 5, 7).

Awards will go to teams who have developed cross-campus, collaborative initiatives — and who have done their best to utilize and pool all available university resources — but who need additional funds to implement their proposed projects.

Awardees agree to provide the New Student Engagement Board’s leadership team with regular updates that summarize the team’s progress to date and budgetary expenditures.

1. Help students identify and use campus resources and work toward successful degree completion.
2. Encourage students, especially new transfer students, to connect with their peers and engage with UT Dallas communities.
3. Expand or enhance peer-to-peer mentoring opportunities and help students develop more effective peer mentoring relationships.
4. Train mentors to develop and demonstrate best-practice mentoring techniques such as coaching, advising, active listening and positive feedback.
5. Teach mentees, particularly first-year and transfer students, how to address problem behaviors that might interfere with important college transitions.
6. Develop or enhance programs that have the potential to increase retention rates for undergraduate students.
7. Strengthen peer-to-peer mentorship programs, especially through greater credentialing such as the College Reading and Learning Association (CRLA) certificate program.
8. Create programmatic opportunities that promote social belonging and academic support for underrepresented students.
9. Train student leaders with the skills necessary to reduce feelings of alienation among students from nontraditional backgrounds.
10. Provide improved opportunities for students from a variety of socioeconomic backgrounds to serve as student leaders.
11. Encourage students to develop a greater sense of belonging through participation in service-learning activities.
12. Help new students develop and hone interpersonal skills, especially in the context of service-learning activities.
13. Assist students, particularly those participating in service-learning activities and courses, to continue working for social change and applying leadership skills gained through service-oriented activities.