Purdue University’s Center for Intercultural Learning, Mentorship, Assessment and Research is pleased to invite applications for funding to support intercultural assessment and research during the 2025-2026 academic year. This Seed Grant program supports faculty, staff and graduate students who wish to engage in the assessment of intercultural learning outcomes, conduct studies of intercultural competency development, and/or generate new intercultural theoretical development, but lack the resources to do so.
Grant Amount: Up to $5000
Call for 2025-2026 is OPEN
In the review process, we will prioritize applications that will:
Please note that travel is an allowable but low priority budget item for CILMAR seed grants; travel necessary for data collection will be more persuasive than travel to disseminate findings. The number and amount of awards will vary dependent upon requests for support and available funding.
CILMAR Seed Grant recipients will be expected to:
Applicants should be employed and/or pursuing a course of study at Purdue University’s West Lafayette campus during the 2025-2026 academic year.
*Statewide Polytechnic and Purdue Indianapolis faculty are eligible.
Please use the proposal template to complete the application. Submit the completed proposal, CV and endorsement email here by Friday, March 3rd, 2025.
For more information, please contact cilmar@purdue.edu.
Note: Submit a white paper and video-recorded presentation of findings from the funded project to be published on the Intercultural Learning Hub by April 2026. The template for white papers can be found here. The video needs to be uploaded using Kaltura only; please watch this video for instructions.
Alejandra Magana, Purdue Polytechnic Institute, $4000, research focusing on a pedagogical approach to promote students' self-awareness.
Zhixu (Rick) Yang and Franki Y.H. Kung, College of Health and Human Sciences. $2000, mixed methods study on the experiences of Asians in the US workforce.
Siddhant Joshi, $2000, to assess the intercultural competence of the students engaged in a cross-culturally team-based experiential learning setting.
Adrie Koehler and Hannah Kim, $1480, to investigate the personal and teaching intercultural competencies of the students enrolled in the Teacher Education Program.
Jianfen Chen, Yao Yang, $1450, to map out the cross-cultural challenges, needs, and supports that international students have encountered within the pandemic context.
Wanju Huang, $2000, to examine the effectiveness of service-learning group project that involved the learners' recreation of ICC modules.
Huai-Rhin Kim, $1000, to investigate the influence of BTS in developing fan intercultural communicative competence.
Sharon Li, Franki Kung, $2000, to explore how the internalization of “positive” Asian American stereotypes might lead to negative workplace implications.
Kelsey Patton, Siqing Wei, Seungyoon Lee, $2000, to examine the career networks of international students searching for work in the U.S. post-graduation.
Diane Wang, Gary Burniske, Wilella Burgess, $1000, to conduct intercultural assessment of an undergraduate overseas STEM research experience for U.S. students.
Siqing Wei, Li Tan, Matthew Ohland, $2000, to examine the extent to which international students boost team-based learning effectiveness in undergraduate engineering education.
Alice Wilcoxson, Scott Lawrance, $396, to initiate programmatic development and assessment of intercultural competence as a healthcare provider.
Temitope Adeoye, Virginia Cabrera, Michael Lolkus, Daniella Castellanos Reyes, and Marquetta Strait, $2000, to evaluate the use of digital intercultural learning badges for College of Education Teaching Assistants.
Casey Haney and Jennifer DeBoer, $300, to reconceptualize intercultural competency through a study of international students' development of cross-cultural skills and attitudes.
Elizabeth Karcher and Paul Ebner, $2000, to create intercultural learning opportunities in an animal science curriculum.
Huai-Rhin Kim, $2000, to study the impact of learning styles on intercultural learning outcomes.
Christi Masters and Lata Krishnan, $2000, to compare the results of group versus individual debriefs of the Intercultural Development Inventory®.
Jill Newton, JoAnn Phillion, Rose Mbewe, Bima Sapkota, and Lili Zhou, $2000, to investigate intercultural competence development through a virtual global education course.
Jacob Stensberg, $2000, to assess intercultural competence development through a music-centered intercultural curriculum.
Marquetta Strait, $1010, to assess Supplemental Instruction (SI) leaders' culturally responsive practices in non-traditional learning environments
Joe Tort, Siddhant Sanjay Joshi, Kirsten Davis, Francisco Montalvo, Niall Peach, Bruno Staszkiewicz, and Akash Patil, $400, to explore engineering students' experiences and learning outcomes from participating in virtual team projects with international partners.
Siqing Wei, Cristian Vargas, and Olivia (Tiantian) Li, $630, to study how international graduate students socially construct their academic paths in Engineering Education.
Jonathan Ying, $720, to compare intercultural learning and competence in a face-to-face course versus a virtual intercultural learning course.
Jaime Bauer Malandraki and Chenell Loudermill, $700, to assess the effectiveness of a training program to improve intercultural competence of graduate students.
Elizabeth Karcher, $2160, to create intercultural assignments that embed intercultural learning pedagogies within an animal science context.
Huai-Rhin Kim and Jungsun Kim, $1750, to investigate intercultural competency among undergraduate students.
Sharon Li, $850, to develop and validate a scale for perceived immigrant contribution.
Megan Sapp Nelson, $1180, to introduce Full Professors to mentoring and cross-cultural communication education.
Pamela Sari, $2000, to compare intercultural learning between Asian international and Asian American students within Asian-interest student organizations.
Jieyu Shi, $1000, to enhance intercultural learning in hospitality and tourism students through internationalizing the curriculum.
Nathan Swanson, $1400, to address the persistent under-representation of minoritized and first-generation students in study away programs.
Phuong Tran, $500, to design a reader to foster intercultural competence in first year writing students.
Jonathan Ying, $460, to evaluate an intercultural learning intervention in a management course.
Sweta Baniya, $2000, to analyze and assess intercultural communication of the disaster-affected digitally networked societies of Nepal and Puerto Rico.
Bradley Dilger, Hadi Banat, Parva Panahi, Rebekah Sims and Phuong Tran, $4000, to link mainstream and international/L2 writing classes in order to support development of intercultural competence among all students.
Rebecca Johnson, $400, to assess the foundation of cultural competence within the School of Nursing faculty.
Elizabeth Karcher, $1600, to identify best practices for promoting intercultural learning in short-term agricultural study abroad programs, specifically in the development of empathy.
Colleen Kelly, $2000, to complete a three-article dissertation comprised of attempts to shed insight on the BEVI institutional signature phenomenon.
Kristen Kirby, $1000, to demonstrate competencies within graduating senior students and faculty that impact patient care.
Tatjana Babic Williams, $1300, to integrate a more intercultural approach into the curriculum of the Italian language program in the School of Languages and Cultures.
Bradley Dilger, Hadi Banat, Parva Panahi, Rebekah Sims and Phuong Tran, $2000, to pair native and non-native English-speaker first-year writing classes to determine how writing curricula and pedagogy influence the development of undergraduate students' intercultural competence.
Louis Hickman, $2000, to investigate the relationship between beliefs about cultural controllability and intercultural competence development using the Cultural Controllability Scale.
Yeling Jiang, $500, to understand Asian students' behaviors in US culture based on a virtual reality simulation.
Nastasha Johnson, $2000, to develop a three-part intercultural intervention plan for Purdue Libraries faculty and staff, combining assessment and workshops with reflection to increase the intercultural competence of participants.
Vasundhara Kaul, $1400, to understand the ways in which threatened populations in Southern India cope with violence in their lives.
Lata Krishnan, $1000, to develop a new Speech, Language and Hearing study abroad opportunity with a service-learning component.
Kyongson Park, $500, to examine the relationship between academic, social, and linguistic integration of international students.
Heidi Parker and Margaret Hegwood, $2000, for the intentional development of global and intercultural competence in students enrolled in Research and Design for the Global Engineering Grand Challenges.
Ronald Smith, Myron McClure and Robert Stwalley, $1500, to provide an effective way for students to become aware of the importance of intercultural competence throughout the design process of the Agricultural & Biological Engineering capstone project.
Hadi Banat, Parva Panahi, Rebekah Sims, & Phuong Tran, $2000, to research intercultural competency development in First Year Writing courses.
Xueting Dou, $500, to create a conceptual framework for the development of intercultural sensitivity through community-based cultural tourism.
Louis Hickman, $500, to develop a new theoretically based approach to intercultural learning and assessment.
Horane Diatta-Holgate, $2000, to cultivate classroom environments that facilitate academic achievement, motivation and development of intercultural attitudes, skills and knowledge.
Elizabeth Karcher, $500, to create collaborative video blogs with students studying abroad.
Vicki Kennell, $2000, to evaluate the intercultural training of writing tutors in comparison to a control group who received no intercultural intervention.
Anne Lucietto, $500, to compare IDI data, pre-study abroad, between Purdue STEM students and others found in referenced studies.
Monica Miller, $2000, to integrate and assess self-awareness interventions in the pharmacy curriculum.
Heidi Parker, $2000, to incorporate the Intercultural Development Inventory (IDI) and the Global Competence Certificate (GCC) into a study abroad curriculum.
Darryl Reano, $500, to analyze an introductory environmental GeoConnections and Place-Based science course.
Per the recommendations of the National Institute for Learning Outcomes Assessment (NILOA) Transparency Framework and the NILOA Excellence in Assessment Standards, we provide the goals for each program offered through CILMAR.
75% of Seed Grant recipients will demonstrate generation of creative and innovative new knowledge relevant to intercultural competence. Each Seed Grant recipient will complete one white paper, one video presentation, and one conference presentation or journal article. These will be assessed, as categorized by the American Association of Colleges and Universities (AAC&U) Creative Thinking VALUE Rubric, for innovative thinking and for connecting/synthesizing/transforming. In this baseline year of data-analysis for creative quality, the goal will be 75% at level three (high milestone) or above on both items.