UNH prides itself on the wide scope of impactful research that our students and faculty engage in. We strive to create opportunities for engaged scholarship that allows students to connect their work to the broader community and find avenues for support. Browse the information on this page to learn about the multitude of resources at your disposal! For questions, please contact Dr. Dovev Levine at Dovev.Levine@unh.edu.
UNH Graduate Engagement Hub Initiative
The UNH Graduate Engagement Hub is a new and exciting platform dedicated to connecting state and regional-based organizations with graduate students, offering opportunities for students to gain experience and network while contributing to local projects. Visit the webpage at the link below to learn more!
Certificate Programs
The emerging fields of citizen science and community science have expanded in recent years, providing new connections between scientific research and community decision-making. With the expansion of the use of and opportunities for citizen and community science, dedicated study through a graduate certificate enables students to focus on conducting robust and authentic citizen and community science projects.
Coastal policy (also referred to as marine or ocean policy) is focused on public policy and governance as it relates to marine, ocean, and coastal resources. Effective management of human activities in ocean, coastal, and Great Lakes areas is critical to our future, which includes the setting of public policy as it relates to these systems. A graduate certificate (stand-alone or companion to another graduate degree) provides unique preparation and dedicated study appropriate for a range of students and professionals with interests in applied coastal science, policy, and/or management and will help students develop expertise and grounding in policy processes.
Courses
Course Number: PPOL 897
This course introduces frameworks and established practices effective for increasing social equity and fostering inclusive participation in decisions and actions that impact people’s lives. Team taught by practitioners and scholars in equity and public engagement, we ground this course in our professional and personally lived experiences from our work in schools, towns, state and regional initiatives. We hope you will bring your stories too! As a member of the class, you will engage in discussions about your identities, biases, and power within your work, learning, and home communities. You will also learn about and reflect upon facilitation strategies for guiding challenging conversations, addressing conflict, and building community coalitions across difference.
Course number: GRAD 834
This three-credit course introduces the emerging field of citizen science, including community science, exploring theories and applications in natural, physical, and social science fields. Students will develop competencies related to project design and implementation. The course will focus on best practices for effective projects and teams and include topics such as volunteer engagement, methods for data sharing, and issues of social justice in citizen science.
Offered spring semester annually.
Course number: MARI 801
Graduate students, faculty and invited presenters will discuss current topics in coastal science, management, and policy, including federal, tribal, state, and municipal policy developments, new scientific findings that might inform management, citizen and community science developments, stakeholder engagement, etc. Primarily focused on SMSOE Graduate Certificate enrollees, this one credit seminar is open to others as space allows. May be repeated barring duplication of subject.
Course number: GRAD 844
Management of natural resources requires the effective involvement of stakeholder and community groups that often have differing perspectives on the path ahead. This course provides a foundation for students from various disciplines to develop a fundamental understanding of the theory and practice of stakeholder and community engagement in natural resource management across a range of ecosystem and governance scales (with a focus on the US Northeast). Students will explore various case studies and track topics of interest throughout the course.
Fellowships
The Sustainability Fellowship pairs exceptional UNH undergraduate students and post-baccalaureates (grad students and recent grads) from UNH and universities across the United States* with municipal, educational, corporate, and non-profit partners to work on transformative sustainability projects. Don’t think your field of study connects with sustainability? Rethink that. We define sustainability broadly – as framed by the UN 17 Sustainable Development Goals. Each summer, Fellows undertake challenging sustainability projects that are designed to create an immediate impact, offer an extraordinary learning experience, and foster meaningful collaboration. While working with their mentors and host organizations, Fellows are supported by their Fellowship peers as well as an active network of partner organizations, alumni, and the UNH team, as they emerge as the next generation of sustainability leaders.
*International students who are currently enrolled in a U.S. college or university are welcome and encouraged to apply.
Communicating Your Research
The Research Communications Academy (RCA) trains faculty members, graduate students, postdoctoral researchers and research-related staff to effectively communicate the power and impact of UNH scholarship with a broad audience. Launched in 2019, the RCA is hosted annually by the Research Office, NH EPSCoR and the UNH Graduate School.
Grab and drink and learn what's going in the local scientific community! You're invited to Seacoast Sips of Science, an ongoing series of events where scientists host meet-ups at New Hampshire breweries and talk about their research! You can check out the event calendar here.
Three Minute Thesis (3MT®) celebrates the exciting research conducted by PhD students around the world. Developed by The University of Queensland (UQ), the competition cultivates students’ academic, presentation, and research communication skills where they are challanged to present their research in 3 minutes with a single, static powerpoint slide.
The UNH Graduate School offers a series of workshops each year to help students prepare for the competition. You can learn more at the UNH 3MT Website.
The annual January Term Graduate Winter Writing Retreat offers students a time and place to work on their dissertations, publications, theses and fellowship applications. Multiple community members, including faculty and the Writing Center provide on-site support and resources. Participants are given free lunch and refreshments as well. Registration typically opens in November each year.
The Graduate Research Conference is an annual showcase in which UNH graduate students from all academic disciplines present their work and research over the course of two days. You can visit the GRC Student Research Media Gallery where students upload their GRC research for online viewing.
Organizations
New Hampshire Listens is a community engagement initiative of the Carsey School of Public Policy at the University of New Hampshire. In the same way that we need the physical infrastructure of roads, bridges, and buildings, we need to build, strengthen, and sustain infrastructure in our communities to support and sustain democracy. Our mission is to help New Hampshire residents talk and work together to create communities that work for everyone.
Coastal and marine resources are experiencing unprecedented stresses. Development and population growth along the coast, changes to commercial fishing and aquaculture industries, rising sea levels and increasing flood risk, habitat degredation and invasive species all threaten our nation's coastlines. New Hampshire Sea Grant works to address these issues through integrated research, extension, and education in the Granite State.
UNHInnovation (UNHI) advocates for and manages the transfer of UNH-derived ideas to the public to maximize their social and economic impact. UNHI protects, promotes, and manages UNH's innovations, supports start-up companies based on UNH’s intellectual property, and develops new opportunities for university and industry collaboration.
Workshops and Panels
Want to hear from UNH community members who have experience with partnerships among university researchers, community groups and bridge organizations such as Extension and public agencies? Want to learn what is meant by engaged scholarship, co-production of knowledge or public impact research? Come join a panel with expertise in community engagement, Sea Grant and Cooperative Extension, citizen and community science and UNH-civic partnerships. You’ll learn different ways to connect your research with the wider world, characteristics of successful academic-community partnerships (hint: humility is key), models for how to make a difference with your research, and about opportunities to build these skills further. Click here to watch a recording of the panel discussion.
