University of Texas at Austin

This grant is to establish and fund the Diversity Fellowship to The University of Texas School of Law's Nonprofit Organizations Institute. The fellowship encourages diversity and participation in the tax-exempt organizations practice of law by introducing law students to the practice area, providing opportunities for mentorship, and creating a network of law students interested in pursuing the practice. The fellowship allows up to 10 recipients per year to attend the annual Nonprofit Organizations Institute, a professional education conference held each January in Austin and to be matched with a practitioner mentor for the duration of the program.

The Engaging News Project is a new effort to develop and test innovations in how newsrooms can better present news in a rapidly changing digital age. Today an estimated 40 percent of Americans turn to the Internet for news, but most online organizations lack the resources to test and evaluate new techniques for citizen engagement. The Project aims to provide research-based techniques for engaging online audiences in ways that are both commercially viable and democratically beneficial, supporting civility and respect for the well-reasoned perspectives of others. This grant would support new research on public engagement with online comment sections, and help to develop a model for the Project’s work moving forward.

A grant to the Robert Strauss Center for International Security and Law at the University of Texas at Austin will continue to support the development of an interdisciplinary, integrated cybersecurity studies program. It will pioneer new educational approaches that integrate insights from computer science, engineering, law, business administration, and public policy (including security studies and civil liberties) into a unified academic program that (a) develops model curricula and educational materials designed for open online access (targeting students as well as law professors and other professional educators) and (b) produces policy-relevant research that draws on similar interdisciplinary perspectives.