Giving Back Endowment: Faculty Innovation Grant.
Apply for a $1,000 Faculty Grant
Application Deadline: Monday, February 16, 2026 at 11:59 p.m.
The Faculty Innovation Initiative is a signature piece of the Nonprofit Leadership Program's long established commitment to high impact community engagement. With generous funding provided by the Giving Back Endowment, established by Dr. Robert and Patricia Long, the Initiatve offers a competitive grant funding of one-time initial support for faculty across campus seeking to incorporate innovative approaches to student-community engagement into their courses. These innovative approaches to classroom education, and the strategic actions that take our students out of the classroom and into our community is part of what makes Murray State such an exceptional university.
Past Award Recipients and Projects
Not sure how to blend philanthropy into your course content? See how past award recipients used their grant funds in creative and transformative ways.
2025 Recipients
Prof. Kari Shemwell, in the College of Humanities and Fine Arts, was awarded $1,000 for her Introduction to Creative Writing course (ENG 214), where she is providing a real-world learning and service opportunity for her students to interview and record the stories of the elderly in Murray. During the non-fiction writing portion of ENG 214, Murray State students will go to a local elder care facility where they will get an opportunity to interview residents, and then work with those same residents to write a biographical essay on their life. At the end of the project, the essays will be printed and bound into a book that will be shared with the residents at the facility.
Dr. Faris Sahawneh, in the Jesse D. Jones College of Science, Engineering and Technology, received $1,000 for his course, CNM 440 in the cybersecurity field. In this course, Murray State students learn about managing and securing information, and will be given an opportunity to apply that learning by creating materials to help educate and secure the online presence of senior citizens in Murray.
Prof. Jake Hildebrant, in the Jesse D. Jones College of Science, Engineering and Technology, was awarded $1,000 to fund a collaborative initiative between his EMT 312 class, the Applied Engineering Club, the Calloway County Resource Center and the Murray Police Department to refurbish old bicycles and distribute them among underprivileged children in Calloway County. This initiative will provide a hands-on learning experience for engineering students, and a way for Murray State students to connect with the community at large.
Dr. Rupkatha Bardhan, in the Jesse D. Jones College of Science, Engineering and Technology, received $1,000 for his Safety and Health Program Training and Management course (OSH 640) where students will be creating a hands-on learning program for high school students expected to directly enter the workforce after graduation. This program will allow the students of the OSH 640 course to apply and reinforce what they have learned in class through brainstorming, planning and implementing a program to teach others.
2024 Recipients
Dr. Megan St. Peters, a professor in the College of Humanities and Fine Arts, was awarded $1,000 to help students engage in experiments demonstrating physiological psychology to fourth graders through her course (PSY 621) Biological Bases of Behavior. Murray State students will go to the Murray Middle School fourth-grade science classes to have the children engage with the experiments hands-on, plot the data, talk about the results and implications, and be given a handout that summarizes the information learned.
Dr. Kelsey Chadwick, a professor in the College of Education and Human Services, received $1,000 for her course, FCS 340 in the Family and Consumer Sciences field. Course objectives include "design and create textile products using different materials" and "acquire teaching methods to teach lessons about fashion and textiles,” and these projects would ensure that students were able to meet these goals while serving the community.
Dr. Stephanie Rea, a professor in the College of Humanities and Fine Arts, was awarded $1,000 to invite a teacher of improvisation Kevin Roame (corporate trainer from WorkPlay Corporate Improv Training, improv teacher at The Second City in Chicago) to the campus, where students practiced the tools of improv and adapt them into their curriculum. This sought to improve communication skills, as well as aid anxiety/stress management through fun and innovative workshops and activities. Roame worked directly with students in existing classes and in sign-up sessions, give a free, public improv performance and a public talk on using comedy and improv in the classroom and life, and a free workshop for the community at Playhouse in the Park.