Gavin Tierney, associate professor of secondary education in the College of Education, received a Fulbright U.S. Scholar Award in co-designed curriculum to Nepal from the U.S. Department of State and the Fulbright Foreign Scholarship Board.
Fulbright U.S. Scholars teach or conduct research in partnership with institutions around the world. Tierney will be focused on co-designing programs and curriculum with students and community members at Kathmandu University. There, he will be collaborating with Suresh Gautam, head of the Department of Development Education. He will begin working in Kathmandu, the capital city of Nepal, in summer 2027.
“One important next step in my scholarship on co-design is to focus on transnational collaboration, learning about co-design in unique communities,” Tierney said.
He also worked on Project ICARO, a five-year $3 million initiative that prepares bilingual and plurilingual teachers for grades 7-12. As principal investigator, Tierney works with faculty, clinical coaches, alumni, educators and undergraduate students on redesigning courses around culturally and linguistically sustaining frameworks. He is additionally involved in three other projects that support faculty and students alike.
“My work focuses on supporting educational equity, not only in courses but in how those courses are designed,” he said. “The premise is simple — if we want more equitable, more meaningful and more engaging curriculum, we need to involve others in the design or redesign. I am trying to explore how best to do that work.”
Tierney will investigate how co-design supports the engagement of community-based curriculum in Nepal, the transnational similarities and differences in conducting co-design, and its impact. He aims to include people not usually included in the educational design of programs and curriculum.
“Learning is a social process, and if we want to build the best learning environments we can, we need to do it in collaboration with others,” Tierney said.