The following are brief descriptions of the projects (taken directly from the original proposals) selected for North Carolina Agricultural and Technical State University (NC A&T) & University of Minnesota (UMN) Research Partnership Phase I awards in 2025. These awards are designed to facilitate mutually beneficial research collaborations between UMN and NC A&T faculty and students. For Phase I, research teams could request up to $10,000 per project; five projects were awarded in 2025 bringing the total number of Phase I awardees to 14 teams.
Critical Perspectives on Emerging Technologies in an HBCU Honors Program: Toward Responsible Integration
Lead PI: Bruna Damiana Heinsfeld, Curriculum and Instruction, UMN
Co-PI: Gerard Dumancas, Associate Dean for Research and Program Innovation, NC A&T
The overarching goal of this proposal is to establish partnership between UMN and NCAT to examine how educational technologies are framed, integrated, and experienced within Honors education at America’s largest historically Black university. NCAT provides a distinctive setting where high-achieving students navigate rigorous coursework while balancing multiple responsibilities, making the ways technologies are communicated, adopted, and negotiated especially important. This project will explore how institutions integrate emerging technologies in education. The collaboration brings together Dr. Heinsfeld, whose expertise lies in critically analyzing educational technologies, and Dr. Dumancas, whose leadership advances innovation in Honors experience. Activities will include reciprocal campus visits, workshops, and comparative analysis of institutional communications, with active engagement of Honors students through research exchanges and mentorship. Deliverables will include a concept paper, a reflective guide for critical approaches to technology use in these contexts, and a roadmap for sustaining collaboration. Project outcomes will generate preliminary data to support future public and private foundation grant submissions. The broader impact is the development of a critical foundation to guide more responsible and contextually ground
A Collaborative Dairy Research Partnership: University of Minnesota and NC A&T
Lead PI: Bradley Heins, West Central Research and Outreach Center, UMN
Co-PIs: Isaac Haagen and Isaac Salfer, Department of Animal Science, UMN
Lauren Mayo, Animal Sciences, NC A&T
This proposal outlines a plan to establish a research and educational partnership between the University of Minnesota's (UMN) renowned dairy science program and North Carolina A&T State University's (NC A&T) innovative dairy unit, led by Dr. Lauren Mayo. The primary goal of this project is to leverage the strengths of both institutions to address pressing challenges in the dairy industry, including animal welfare, production efficiency, and the integration of precision dairy technologies. Through a series of reciprocal visits, workshops, and student/faculty exchanges, this partnership will foster a collaborative environment for knowledge sharing, leading to the development of joint research proposals and educational opportunities for students at both universities. The proposed activities, including tours of UMN’s diverse dairy facilities and NC A&T’s state-of-the-art automated milking system, will provide a foundation for a long-term collaboration that will advance dairy science and prepare the next generation of industry leaders.
Building Rural Brain Health Equity through Community-Based Participatory Research: A UMN-NC A&T Partnership
Lead PI: Kristen Jacklin, Family Medicine and Biobehavioral Health, UMD
Co-PIs: Joshua Fergen, Memory Keepers Medical Discovery Team, UMD
Cassandra Germain and Stephanie Teixeira-Poit, Center of Excellence for Integrative Health Disparities and Equity Research (CIHDER), and Shuang Li, Sociology and Social Work, NC A&T
Memory Keepers Medical Discovery Team (MK-MDT) is responding to this grant opportunity to develop collaborative relationships between MK-MDT and NC A&T’s Center of Excellence for Integrative Health Disparities and Equity Research (CIHDER). Our goal is for each university to host an in-person visit so faculty can share ideas and their approaches to working with rural communities on research topics related to brain health and dementia, with a focus on community engagement, education, and community-based research methodologies. MK-MDT and CIHDER both use community-based participatory research designs to work with underrepresented rural communities to address community needs related to brain health and dementia in culturally appropriate ways. This poises our collaborative team to demonstrate how these strategies are uniquely adapted to the local context and culturally appropriate for the regions and populations with which they work and to leverage these methods to bolster our respective research programs. These exchanges will lead to a robust research agenda culminating in practical resources including community engagement toolkits, evidence-based rural recruitment strategies, and culturally attuned research methodologies. This will help identify both the similarities and differences across the rural U.S. landscape and opportunities for future research and collaboration to address rural brain health and dementia.
Improving Economic Education: A Collaboration around AI and Open Educational Resources
Lead PI: Caroline Krafft, Humphrey School of Public Affairs, UMN
Co-PI: Scott Simkins and Wisdom Takumah, Economics, NC A&T
Dr. Krafft and Dr. Simkins are national leaders in economic education; this project will enable them to explore potential collaborations around artificial intelligence (AI) and open educational resources (OER) in economic education. While Dr. Krafft and Dr. Simkins have interacted at events such as the Conference on Teaching and Research in Economic Education, e.g., serving together on a panel, they have not previously collaborated. They have a shared interest in AI in economic education, as well as creating OER. This project will allow them to travel to each other’s institutions, meet other faculty with similar interests, and learn about initiatives around AI and OER at each institution. They will each present some of their existing AI and/or OER work at a university-wide seminar to students, faculty, and administrators while visiting. During visits, they will meet with students, faculty, and administrators to explore potential future collaborations around OER and AI. For instance, Dr. Krafft will engage with North Carolina A&T’s university-wide “AI accelerator.” The long-term goal of this exploration is to apply for a large research grant, e.g., from NSF, around economic education, AI, and OER that will make AI-related educational resources more accessible to economics educators.
Collaborations to Advance Population Health Informatics (CAP)
Lead PI: Sripriya Rajamani, School of Nursing, UMN
Co-PIs: Robin Austin, School of Nursing, UMN
Angelo Moore and Cassandra Germain, Center of Excellence for Integrative Health Disparities and Equity Research, NC A&T
As healthcare and public health become increasingly digitalized, it is vital to incorporate health informatics as a key component of research and education. Partnerships are essential for collaborative informatics research and building informatics-savvy workforce. This joint endeavor will be led by Dr. Sripriya Rajamani, co-principal investigator of a federal informatics workforce grant inclusive of under-represented populations, along with Dr. Robin Austin from University of Minnesota (UMN). Drs. Angelo Moore and Casandra Germain will represent North Carolina Agricultural and Technical State University (NCAT) in their roles as Director and Associate Director of the Center of Excellence for Integrative Health Disparities and Equity Research; a research center focused on health disparities and equity. This proposal presents a multi-pronged approach to boosting informatics research capacity and initiating student engagement. Objectives are to augment knowledge-sharing with proposed activities: (1) invitation to Dr. Rajamani to attend health equity symposium hosted by NCAT; (2) informatics presentation by Dr. Rajamani to NCAT students; (3) invitation to Dr. Moore to attend informatics conference hosted by the UMN School of Nursing; (4) on-going ideation on health-equity research projects with student inclusion in studies. The overarching goal is to create the foundation for a health informatics-oriented robust collaborative research program.