Scaffolded Projects for the Social Good (SPSG)

Co-Principal Investigator, National Science Foundation grant “Scaffolded Computing Projects for the Social Good,” $288,100, 2023-2026. Principal Investigator: Stan Kurkovsky

Jun 15, 2023

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Scaffolded Projects for the Social Good (SPSG) is an NSF-funded collaboration between Central Connecticut State University and Xavier University.

The project goal is to develop resources to assist computer science faculty who wish to embed community-based service-learning projects into their curriculum. While not specific to our recommendations, we focus on projects and project partners (e.g. local non-profits) that illustrate computing’s potential for positive social impact.

Leveraging the knowledge and skills of future software engineers to help non-profits and community organizations with their software projects. The outcome is a sustainable studio-based framework where students can build and demonstrate their professional competencies in computing while serving the greater social good. The goal of this research is to generalize the framework and best practices that have allowed our team to facilitate over 65 distinct projects and engaged over 500 students with these types of projects to a model that can be widely adopted by higher education institutions to benefit both student learning and their communities. This research is supported by NSF.