Associate Professor Cheryl Mason Bolick has been named to the Carolina Center for Public Service’s new cohort of the Thorp Faculty Engaged Scholars program. She was one of ten faculty members from across the UNC-Chapel Hill campus to be chosen for the program.
The Thorp Faculty Engaged Scholars program brings together selected faculty from across the campus to participate in a two-year experiential, competency-based curriculum designed to enhance their engaged scholarship.
The program includes an award amount of $5,000 per year. Cohort members participate in a series of workshops, panels and case studies by leading UNC faculty, community and national experts and funding program officers.
Each participant develops an individual project to pursue as part of the program. The group also works to form a learning community with the faculty and community course directors to support one another’s projects and community partners.
The growing network of Thorp Faculty Engaged Scholars reports outcomes including new interdisciplinary collaborations, successful grant applications and both traditional and non-traditional products of scholarship.
Bolick conducts research in social studies teacher education and experiential education, with a focus on experiential education at the graduate level.
She has engaged in experiential education with her students by participating in North Carolina Outward Bound courses and through service-learning work on the Durham Hub Farm. Her work has led her to study the experiences of teachers engaged in experiential education and to investigate how it transfers to their K-12 teaching practice.
Through her work as a Thorp Faculty Engaged Scholar, Bolick plans to deepen the work she is doing in teacher education and to use it as a springboard toward investigating experiential education in K-12 settings.
The Thorp Faculty Engaged Scholars is a program of the Carolina Center for Public Service.