Students & SWGs
The Short-term Working Group (SWG) program is designed to provide UTD students an opportunity to work closely with a faculty member on a targeted project. Students can expect to see projects for Spring 2025 posted no later than December 10th. Join the SWG Student Team to be notified when new projects are available!
Faculty members propose projects and welcome ~10 undergraduate students to join them for four in-person sessions to complete a project. Students who complete a SWG program will gain skills, develop a professional relationship with a faculty member, meet other UTD students and receive a digital badge highlighting skills gained during the project.
Student Testimonials
“This SWG was a great way to share ideas and implement tangible changes to a course that will better help future students taking the course (plus, you can add it to your resumé)!”
“SWG was a unique opportunity that came just at the right time. As a transfer student in my senior year, I hadn’t had many opportunities before to network or conduct research. Overall, a 10/10 experience.”
Getting to work with my peers and Dr. Kristin Atchison in a safe, group-oriented way was an incredible experience. I got to strengthen my skills in public speaking, teamwork and time management. It’s such a rewarding feeling to know that our opinions as students do make a difference to faculty members, and that our voices are being heard and put into action through this program. I would recommend this program to any student looking for a challenging and ultimately extremely rewarding experience!
Spring 2025 Projects
Browse details of all Spring 2025 projects
Engaging in Neuroscience (Spring 2025)
Faculty Member: Dr. Anna Taylor
School of Behavioral and Brain Sciences
Students will help me to develop and vet hands-on activities to engage undergraduate students from all majors in Introduction to Neuroscience material. I will share with them the activities that I have previously attempted and challenge them to revamp those or to develop new ideas. The activities will need to be feasible for courses with low (10) to high enrollment (100+). The students will also help me to come up with questions to assess the success of the activities. The activities will be used in a Fall 2025 course.
Graphic Design for Psychology! (Spring 2025)
Faculty Member: Dr. Kristin Atchison
School of Behavioral and Brain Sciences
Students will create visuals and participation activities for courses (Introduction to Psychology, Lifespan Development, Cognitive Development, Infancy and Statistics for Psychology). Primarily students will be creating/sourcing visuals for my lectures, but students will also have an opportunity to create at least one applied active participation assignment. Students who have taken a related course or have existing graphic design skills are encouraged to apply. Students will develop skills of translating content into graphic designs to foster understanding, as well as skills related to course design, communication, and project collaboration skills.
Dementia Simulation, Shifting Student Views (Spring 2025)
Faculty Member: Prof. Diane Walsh
School of Behavioral and Brain Sciences
Students will help design measures to assess the impact of a dementia simulation for University students. Students will experience the simulation, review and discuss literature about simulations and empathy, and discuss opportunities to implement across BBS. The activities will be used to develop a research study for future semesters.
Teaching Notes: Active Engagement (Spring 2025)
Faculty Member: Dr. Ben Porter
School of Engineering & Computer Science
Active engagement with class material can drastically improve how well students retain information. I am interested in developing best practices to improve the use of active engagement in classes. My goal for this project is to research best practices in teaching that will benefit students about active engagement, and to develop short communications for sharing these findings with faculty.
Teaching Notes: Accommodations (Spring 2025)
Faculty Member: Dr. Ben Porter
School of Engineering & Computer Science
Student needs for an equitable education vary drastically. I am interested in developing best practices to make student accommodations a norm instead of an exception. My goal for this project is to research best practices in teaching that will benefit students with accommodations that also benefit the student population as a whole, and to develop short communications for sharing these findings with faculty.
Accent Modification – Ideas and Innovation (Spring 2025)
Faculty Member: Dr. Hannah Pourchot Neale
School of Behavioral and Brain Sciences
Together we will innovate and improve upon Accent Modification training services at the University of Texas at Dallas. We will create new and innovative ideas for working with international clients from various cultural backgrounds. We will look into language and cultural differences and implementation of materials in a therapeutic setting, that can be applied in many different settings.
Excitable Lives: Neurons & Muscles Animated (Spring 2025)
Faculty Member: Dr. Zhuoru Wu
School of Natural Sciences and Mathematics
Animators Wanted! Ready to blend science and creativity? The hidden world of neurons and muscle cells is full of captivating stories—complex, invisible, and hard to grasp. That’s where YOU come in! We’re looking for talented animators to transform intricate molecular processes into engaging, easy-to-understand animations. Bring science to life through short, memorable visuals that captivate and educate. This interdisciplinary project is a unique chance to combine your animation skills with scientific storytelling, making complex biology accessible and exciting for all. Students will use free tools (such as Adobe Animate or Canva or other options) to complete the project.
Changing Minds about the Wind (Spring 2025)
Faculty Member: Dr. Armin Zare
School of Engineering & Computer Science
While the scientific community has accepted wind as a sustainable energy source, the public perception remains divided on the benefits of wind, with adverse arguments that are often fraught with misconceptions or even conspiracy. Unfortunately, these misconceptions can be used to impede scientific progress at the level of local or federal governments. Students will conduct research into prior studies on communicating the socioeconomic benefits of renewable energies, engage in brainstorming activities on novel ideas for gauging and affecting the public’s perception, and come up with questionnaires for public engagement.
AI Perspectives: Student Voices (Spring 2025)
Faculty Members: Dr. Sarah Moore and Dr. Kathryn Lookadoo
Naveen Jindal School of Management
Students will create and manage a 45-minute student-led panel for UTD’s Week of AI (March 31–April 4). This panel will highlight diverse perspectives on AI, emphasizing real-world applications and ethical considerations. Participants will develop skills in event planning, speaker recruitment, and facilitation while exploring topics such as AI in academic integrity and practical uses. No prior AI or event-planning experience is required—just an interest in AI and a willingness to collaborate. This project provides a unique opportunity to shape meaningful campus conversations about AI’s role in higher education.
Organic Chemistry Study Aids (Spring 2025)
Faculty Member: Dr. Sumudu Wijenayake
School of Natural Sciences & Mathematics
In this project, students will work in small groups with the instructor to prepare supplemental class material for organic chemistry 1. This gives students the opportunity to work with other students with similar interest. Success in this project would be students discussing and identifying what needs to be revised in existing supplemental problem sets for organic chemistry 1 and revising those needed and developing new problem sets for a few chapters (chapters 6 and 7 – types of reactions in organic chemistry). A promo code is required for this SWG!
Presentation Skills (Spring 2025)
Faculty Member: Dr. Farah Siddiqui
School of Engineering & Computer Science
Students will develop a practical and reusable curriculum that equips UTD students with essential presentation skills, focusing on effective delivery, visual design, audience engagement, and Q&A management. The goal of this SWG is leaving a lasting resource for academic and professional success. Aristotle taught that rhetoric, or the art of public speaking, involves the faculty of observing in any given case the available means of persuasion (Covino, W. A. and Jolliffe, D. A., 1995). The aim of this project is to develop a curriculum that enables students to develop the persuasive skills required for effective communication.
Understanding Prejudice – Creating Teaching Modules (Spring 2025)
Faculty Members: Dr. Salena Brody & Dr. Nils Roemer
School of Behavioral and Brain Sciences and Bass School of Arts, Humanities, and Technology
Calling history and psychology lovers! In this SWG, students will work closely with Drs. Brody and Roemer to develop historical spotlight features for a psychology of prejudice textbook. SWG students will focus on particular historical events, curating primary source material to tell the story to readers in an engaging way. This SWG needs students who love going down the rabbit hole on a topic and making connections across disciplines.
Gaming in a Professional Setting (Spring 2025)
Faculty Member: Dr. Timothy Christopher
Bass School of Arts, Humanities, and Technology
The goal of this working group is for students to continue analyzing the logistics of running a multi-session, multi-player, no-elimination game in a professional academic setting. The students will fill the roles of players participating in a short 4 session competition. The goal is to further improve a concise list of concepts and guidelines for designing games to be played for educational purposes in classroom settings.
Cool to be Kind – an AR exhibition (Spring 2025)
Faculty Member: Dr. Christine Veras
Bass School of Arts, Humanities, and Technology
Students will design and animate images for an interactive exhibition centered on the themes of Kindness and Joy, using the Augmented Reality (AR) tool Eyejack. Over four weeks, they will explore creative storytelling, visual design, and AR animation techniques, crafting pieces that combine traditional art with cutting-edge technology. Through workshops and peer critiques, students will refine their concepts and learn to integrate AR seamlessly into their visuals. The final project will culminate in an engaging exhibition at the AHT Gallery, inviting audiences to experience these themes through innovative, immersive displays.
Brain Bee Student Organization (Spring 2025)
Faculty Members: Dr. Emily Touchstone & Dr. Amy Zwierzchowski
School of Behavioral and Brain Sciences
Emily Touchstone and Amy Zwierzchowski will work with students to develop a new Student Organization at UT Dallas. The Brain Bee Student Organization will adopt an existing program from The Hockaday School in Dallas, who hopes to pass the reins to BBS at UT Dallas. The Brain Bee has been hosted annually to bring together high school students from around the metroplex who share a love for brain science. Students compete in a spelling-bee style event with questions focused on brain science. In the UTD iteration of Brain Bee, our School hopes to expose high school students to all BBS and UTD have to offer.