Meet the 2026 Collaborative Project Courses Faculty Fellows

The Collaborative Project Courses Faculty Fellows Program, which kicked off on May 11 with three days of in-person workshops, supports faculty interested in designing courses in which student learning is driven by collaborative research on applied projects that extend across an entire semester.

This year’s cohort includes 15 faculty affiliated with seven Duke schools: Trinity College of Arts & Sciences, Pratt School of Engineering, Sanford School of Public Policy, the Divinity School and the Schools of Law, Medicine and Nursing.

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Faculty fellows will reimagine an existing course or design a completely new course in which students will work together in teams to explore, research and create projects. Courses under development include two graduate-level courses, four classes for graduate students or advanced-level undergraduates, and eight undergraduate courses. Course (re)design is facilitated through intensive workshops and collaborations among fellows, with support and guidance from faculty and experts in teaching and pedagogy.

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2026 Faculty Fellows

Sonia Bansal (Biomedical Engineering) & 
Megan Madonna (Biomedical Engineering)

BME 462: Design for the Developing World
BME 490: Sports & Rehabilitation Engineering Design

BME 462 is an existing senior capstone course taught by Madonna. BME 490, taught by Bansal, will serve as another senior capstone option in Fall 2026. The pair's vision is to create a unified framework for senior design for Biomedical Engineering majors, driven by sustained, ethical and reciprocal partnerships and authentic, applied engineering challenges. Projects for both courses will be sourced from community, clinical and global health partners. Students will work in teams across the full semester to identify needs, define design criteria, prototype, test, iterate and deliver solutions.

Rachel Beaudoin (Civil & Environmental Engineering)

Hudson Hall REnovation as a Teaching Tool

This course will engage students in the real‑time study of an active construction project on Duke’s campus, using the renovation of Hudson Hall as a living laboratory. The course is designed to give students hands‑on exposure to sustainable building practices, construction management and the interdisciplinary coordination required for major capital projects. Given the interdisciplinary coordination required for the renovation between Duke and the external design team, students will learn how trade-offs are established and how sustainability and performance priorities are communicated across the building design and construction processes, building practical literacy in sustainable construction, certifications and building design guidelines.

Caitlin Donovan (Education)

Teaching Literacies in the Humanities; Teaching Literacies in STEM

Teaching Literacies in the Humanities and Teaching Literacies in STEM are individual sections of a redesigned graduate course in the Master of Arts in Teaching program. Donovan's redesigned course will grow and establish sustained partnerships with Durham Public Schools (DPS) and education policy researchers at the Sanford School of Public Policy. Several interdisciplinary teams will partner with DPS educators and administration, particularly those serving multilingual learners and students with identified disabilities. Several additional teams will collaborate with Sanford researchers to translate current literacy and education policy research into classroom-ready frameworks and implementation models.

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Liping Feng (ObStetrics & Gynecology)

Women's Health Advocacy: From Research to Policy

Students in this new course will work in interdisciplinary teams to address real-world women’s health challenges and lived experiences through evidence-based advocacy. Projects may include identifying evidence gaps in women’s health research or clinical guidelines; developing advocacy briefs; creating policy briefs, clinician summaries or patient education materials; or designing advocacy strategies to improve research inclusion, clinical screening or patient-centered care. Teams will form partnerships with women’s health clinics or hospital programs; community-based organizations focused on maternal health and reproductive justice; public health departments or advocacy organizations; or professional societies.

Andrea Larson (German Studies)

German 340S: German Media

Larson is redesigning an existing advanced language course to examine contemporary German society through its rapidly evolving media landscape. Organized around four thematic case studies — right-wing populism and the AfD (Alternative for Germany), youth culture on TikTok, contemporary German music as social commentary and climate activism — the course explores how media shapes political discourse, cultural identity and public debate in Germany. Working in small interdisciplinary teams, students will analyze authentic German-language media sources, including news coverage, social media, music videos and activist messaging, and produce projects such as narrated video essays, podcast episodes, newsroom simulations and social media campaigns. The course will also incorporate guest journalists, podcasters and digital content creators whenever possible, while emphasizing co-creation, iterative feedback and collaborative problem-solving.

Darina Petrovsky (Nursing) 

Nursing 519: Gerontological Nursing: Caring for an Aging Population

Gerontological Nursing is an existing course designed to prepare students to deliver evidence‑based, age‑friendly, person‑centered care. Petrovsky plans to revise the course to incorporate applied, team‑based projects focused on challenges facing older adults. Potential projects include improving care provided in a community setting, enhancing dementia‑support resources or evaluating barriers to aging‑in‑place. Students will be encouraged to work with long-standing School of Nursing community partners to conduct interviews, observe programs, co‑design interventions and present recommendations to community stakeholders. The course will shift from a lecture‑based format to an interactive, project‑centered model where students use collaborative approaches, case‑based problem-solving and iterative co-design thinking to improve nursing practice.

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Karine Provot (Romance Studies)

FRench 204: Advanced Intermediate French language & Culture

French 204 is the second course in Duke's two-semester Intermediate French sequence. The course integrates language learning with the study of Paris as a cultural, political and symbolic space through film, literary texts, songs, television series, hip hop and public street art. Students explore the birth of hip hop in Paris and its transatlantic connections while analyzing how race, migration, history and urban space shape cultural expression. Provot plans to redesign the course to include experiential learning by having it culminate in a student-driven street art project. Students will work with faculty in the departments of Dance and African & African American Studies, as well as with local Durham artists, to develop the skills and knowledge necessary to manage a successful street art project, including choosing sites, determining best practices for collaborative art projects that respect the community, and designing and producing the art project.

Mara Revkin (Law)

Law 538: Transitional Justice and Peacebuilding in Practice

This course combines seminar-based instruction with real-world, partner-driven projects for the International Organization for Migration (IOM, the UN Migration Agency), building on a multi-year Duke-IOM partnership Revkin has led since 2023, which included a Bass Connections Project on South Sudan. Each team will work with IOM counterparts throughout the semester to refine a research question or project, identify feasible deliverables and incorporate feedback on drafts. Team projects will culminate in written deliverables — research reports, legal memos and policy recommendations delivered to IOM. Students will gain valuable community-based experience through sustained engagement with IOM partners, particularly national staff from the affected countries, and virtual consultations with experts and local stakeholders.

Daria Smirnova (Slavic & Eurasian Studies)

Scandal and Salvation: The Holy Fool Archetype Across Russian Theology, Literature and Politics

This is a new course exploring one of the most compelling yet overlooked archetypes in Russian culture: the Holy Fool (yurodivy), a figure who weaponizes perceived “folly” to tell the truth and transform society. The centerpiece of this course will be a semester-long project in which small teams of students produce public-facing works that bring the Holy Fool tradition into dialogue with contemporary issues. Project formats might include a digital exhibition, podcast series, policy brief or community education module. Teams will move through a research phase, design phase, peer evaluation and final public presentation, partnering with community organizations such as Eastern Orthodox parishes, disability advocacy groups and human rights coalitions.

Alex Steiger (Computer Science) & 
Jun Yang (Computer Science)

AI-Copiloted Software Engineering Practicum

This course incorporates a mixed format, with class time divided between introducing concepts, supervised teamwork, client check-ins and milestone presentations. Students will work in teams of 5-6 to build real software for community partners, taking on defined roles within their teams such as project lead, frontend/backend developer or client liaison. Projects will be sourced from Duke alumni, Durham businesses and Duke departments. Partners will provide authentic requirements, iterative feedback and accountability. Students will gain technical knowledge, transferable skills (project management, client communication, collaborative development), and an informed perspective on AI's role in real projects.

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Kristin Stephens-Martinez (Computer Science)

CompSci 216: Everything Data

CompSci 216 is an existing data science course that attracts students early in their college careers. The course includes a semester-long group project that moves from an initial plan through a proposal and prototype before culminating in a report and video presentation. The project's goal is for students to apply what they are learning to a data set of their choice, giving them a highly motivating context to practice the concepts presented. The project currently takes place largely outside of class, but Stephens-Martinez wants to integrate it more fully into the course, structuring more in-class activities where students can utilize their project data sets.

Hideyo Tsumura (Nursing)

Nursing 926: Pharmacology for nurse Anesthetists

Nursing 926 is a required, foundational course in the nurse anesthesia curriculum which Tsumura plans to revise to include patient-centered inquiry. Students will work in teams to interview community members who have undergone surgery and anesthesia to better understand their experiences, perceptions and concerns regarding perioperative care. Teams will analyze how pharmacologic decisions, communication strategies and provider behaviors influence patient safety, comfort and trust. Students will then develop projects such as educational tools, patient-informed communication frameworks and case analyses linking drug management to patient experience. Working together, students will integrate these insights with foundational pharmacology to deepen clinical reasoning while strengthening skills in teamwork, communication and empathy.

Norbert Wilson (Divinity; Public policy)

PUBPOL 304/ECON 338: Economics of the Public Sector

Economics of the Public Sector is an existing, required intermediate-level course. Wilson's vision is to formalize an existing policy brief assignment into a fully developed collaborative project, in which students tackle applied public sector challenges, such as food insecurity or immigration, using economic tools to generate feasible recommendations. Projects will culminate in a professional policy brief and presentation tailored to partners such as local nonprofits, state agencies or policy institutes. When direct partnerships aren't possible, projects will be structured around authentic, real-world policy problems, encouraging students to gain deeper mastery of public economics content while developing core professional skills, including translating theory into policy analysis, interpreting data responsibly, synthesizing research, writing for policymakers and managing collaborative work.

Learn More

• Visit our Collaborative Project Courses: Course Design Resource Center, which includes video advice and example syllabi from Duke faculty, as well as links to helpful resources.
• Read about Cecilia Márquez’s and Jenifer Hamil-Luker’s Collaborative Project Courses.
• Check out other cohorts of Collaborative Project Courses Faculty Fellows, including our inaugural cohort (2020), second cohort (2022) and third cohort (2024).