EDI Faculty Grants

Embedding innovative and inclusive educational practices.

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Grants between $10,000 and $20,000 are available for initiatives that enhance opportunities for students from socio-economically and educationally disadvantaged backgrounds, students with diverse gender identities, LGBTQIA+ students, students with disability and students from culturally and linguistically diverse backgrounds.

These grants will be funded by the Division of Societal Impact, Equity & Engagement, and are available to combined teams of professional and academic staff from all UNSW faculties.

EDI faculty grants are designed to:

support teaching and learning initiatives that intend to positively impact students’ university experience, engagement, and success. 
support projects that will build student and staff capacity for promoting a respectful culture and practising inclusivity in their work, study, and interactions.
support existing programs/units of study as well as new projects/activities with potential for expansion and implementation across schools or faculties.

Applications close on Monday 21 April 2025.

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FAQs

What are the key dates?

Email your completed application form to edi@unsw.edu.au by 5pm, Monday 21 April.

Download the application form.
A panel made up of the Deputy Vice-Chancellor, Equity Diversity & Inclusion; Director, Access, Equity and Inclusion; Pro Vice-Chancellor, Education & Student Experience; and two faculty EDI committee representatives.
Applications will be ranked based on their eligibility and fulfilment of the selection criteria (see EDI Faculty Grant guidelines).
No, you are welcome to apply as an individual, but we do encourage collaborations between professional and academic staff where possible to encourage expansive thinking and innovation.
We encourage EDI faculty grants that are designed to:

support teaching and learning initiatives that intend to positively impact students’ university experience, engagement, and success. 

support projects that will build student and staff capacity for promoting a respectful culture and practising inclusivity in their work, study, and interactions.

support existing programs/units of study as well as new projects/activities with potential for expansion and implementation across schools or faculties. 
The funds can be used for any goods or services that support the initiative outlined in your grant application, including salaries (e.g., research assistants).
Any unspent funds by May 2025 or September 2025 will be returned to the Division of Societal Impact, Equity and Engagement.
The intellectual property created will remain with the grant winner. However, we do require that you/your team present your project findings and outcomes at either the December 2025 EDI Board meeting, or a separate showcase event that may align to other Division of EDI programming.
The Division of Societal Impact, Equity and Engagement will provide funding. It will also provide reporting templates and guidelines for the final project showcase in 2025.
Please email edi@unsw.edu.au. We are happy to answer any questions on the EDI Faculty Grants scheme.

Access the EDI Faculty Grants Guidelines

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EDI Faculty Grants Recipients

The EDI Faculty Grants fund initiatives that enhance opportunities for students from socio-economically and educationally disadvantaged backgrounds, students with diverse gender identities, LGBTQIA+ students, students with disability and students from culturally and linguistically diverse backgrounds.

2024 Recipients

The listed projects were funded based on a panel review that judged applications on measures of impact, feasibility and relevance.

About the project:

‘ADA Stories: Reimagining Inclusion on Campus’ aims to tackle issues of empowerment, equity, systems, services, health and climate. Key outputs include the intersectional mapping of campus experiences with a strong focus on co-creation and participatory design with queer students of diverse lived experience. The project seeks to promote empowerment through art and expression to reshape campus spaces and cultivate allyship across UNSW, by producing community-led events and inclusive practices and policies, as well as by enabling student-led advocacy.

Project team: Emma Peters, Emma Kirby, Josh Wiesberger

Faculty: Arts, Design & Architecture

Award amount: $16,252
About the project:

‘“Everyone’s business”: Building Capacity in Master of Public Health’ seeks to support MPH staff in their journey to embed best practice training in First Nations’ cultural safety across core courses as well as enable staff to create and invite students to actively build learning environments that are respectful of all cultural differences and that are inclusive of First Nations’ experiences and knowledge, and free from racism. Ultimately, the project supports collaboration between Indigenous stakeholders and communities and MPH academic staff to inform the development of a new Program Learning Outcome (PLO) on First Nations cultural safety in the MPH.

Project team: Niamh Stephenson, Katrina Blazek, Timothy Dobbins, Anita Heywood, Peter Malouf, Sally Nathan, Sophie Pitt

Faculty: Medicine & Health

Award amount: $20,000
About the project:

The First Nations Engineering Science Society is conceived with the objective to create a society that supports, inspires and engages current and future First Nations students within the Faculty of Engineering and Faculty of Science. The project critically endeavours to link culture and technology, hand-in-hand for the betterment of UNSW students, fostering an understanding and appreciation of Indigenous history and tools, and as such, culminates in the development of boomerang-powered drones.

Project team: Sonya Brown, Sarah Grundy, Tyson Namok, Isabella Zdravkovic, Harry Brotherhood

Faculty: Engineering

Award amount: $10,000
About the project:

Building on work involving big data analytics that monitored the performance of students and offered them targeted support to ensure retention and success, the aim of ‘Education support to make students shine’ is to give all students equal opportunities in Electrical Engineering. The project will do this by expanding existing open laboratories and student drop-in centres, as well as by fostering universal design learning (UDL) practices, mapping existing instructional material and approaches that align with UDL in two large key courses in Electrical Engineering (ELEC1111 and ELEC2134), and using the UDL framework to adapt additional instructional material and approaches that do not align with UDL to increase student engagement and satisfaction.

Project team: Dr. Inma Tomeo-Reyes, Roy Zeng

Faculty: Engineering

Award amount: $10,000

2023 Recipients

In 2023, EDI Faculty Grants funded initiatives that improve opportunities, support and outcomes for students from low socio-economic status (low-SES) backgrounds to support the Gateway Equity Target. Additionally, the grants provided seed funding to engage greater areas of the University in the development and implementation of innovative inclusive teaching and learning initiatives.

The listed projects were fully funded based on a panel review that judged applications on measures of impact, feasibility and relevance.

Project team: Dr Laura McKemmish, Dr Laura McKnight

Faculty: Science

Award amount: $20,000
Project team: Dr Inmaculada Tomeo-Reyes, Mr Roy Zeng, Dr Arash Khatamianfar

Faculty: Engineering

Award amount: $20,000
Project team: Terry Cumming, Ian McArthur, Karen Kriss, Karin Watson, Veronica Jiang

Faculty: Arts, Design & Architecture

Award amount: $25,924
On the engagement, science identity, and career aspirations of under-represented student groups

Project team: Dr Sara Kyne, Dr Laura McKemmish, Dr Lauren McKnight

Faculty: Science

Award amount: $19,605

Two projects received partial funding to assist with the development of ethics applications:

Project team: Mr Chris Pearce, Professor Tracie Barber, Associate Professor Greg Smith

Faculty: Law & Justice, Engineering, Medicine & Health

Award amount: $3,000
Project team: Nicholas Stevens, Sarah White

Faculty: Business

Award amount: $3,000

Learn more

Gateway Equity Target

UNSW is committed to having an undergraduate community that is reflective of the broader Australian population and enabling access, participation, and graduate success for students from equity cohorts.

Gateway

The Gateway Admission Pathway and Program (GAPP) addresses access by working with students early in their academic journey to enhance their educational outcomes and offers an equitable pathway to UNSW with a significantly adjusted ATAR.

Grant applications open:	Wednesday 22 January 2025
Grant applications close:	Monday 21 April 2025
Grant recipients notified:	Wednesday 30 April 2025
Funding confirmed and part A disbursed:	Thursday 1 – Thursday 8 May 2025
Confirmation of Part A expenditure & progress report due:	Friday 29 August 2025
Part B funding distributed:	Monday 1 September – Monday 8 September 2025
Final report due:	Friday 19 December 2025
Project outcomes EDI Board presentation and showcase:	January 2026

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