Recent Projects

Dementia and the Arts

This innovative course, partly funded by UC Forward, merges the fields of music and medicine. It explores the benefits of musical collaboration among people who have cognitive impairment, their family members and students.

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CCM Idea Lab

Conceived in 2020, the CCM Idea Lab explores technical, artistic and philosophical questions to create short performance pieces that showcase the work of students and faculty.

University of Cincinnati College-Conservatory of Music (CCM) faculty and students created seven multimedia projects during the 2021 spring semester, including the award-nominated music video "Gold."

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Zero Hunger Zero Waste

Inquiry to Innovation: Zero Hunger/Zero Waste was a trans-disciplinary UC Forward seminar offered in partnership with the Kroger Co.'s Zero Hunger/Zero Waste Foundation.

In this course, students worked in interdisciplinary teams, innovating around transforming campus food waste practices and barriers to food access for UC students. Six teams of students generated ideas with campus and Kroger partners to develop proposals that included:

  • food rescue from UC Dining Services and local retail food outlets
  • a network delivery system for delivering food to the Bearcats Pantry and non-profits near campus, and
  • advocacy/policy proposals for "Waste Free UC"

Students who took the course are now working on an implementation plan for the "Bearcat Food Recovery Network" as project co-ops with a UC Forward co-LAB.

View a report of the student teams' research process and proposed solutions


Puzzles for Zoo Animals

two tigers in a zoo enclosure paw at a large white closed PVC tube

Malayan tigers paw at a device that plays music and contains lights at the Cincinnati Zoo & Botanical Garden. Photo/Colleen Kelley/UC Creative Services

The Cincinnati Zoo funded and partnered with UC on a project which pulled 30 students from 10 disciplines together with 10 zoo staff mentors to design, fabricate, and test nine prototype animal enrichment devices for tigers, penguins, giraffes and large birds.

View a report of the students' design process and outcomes

Article: UC students test wits of zoo animals with enrichment


A New Green Uptown

Innovative instruction on sustainability is at the heart of this collaboration among the University of Cincinnati's departments of English, Environmental Studies and Geography. The interdisciplinary course series is designed to make students more aware of UC’s relationship to the surrounding community.

Article: Students evaluate UC’s environmental impact through experiential learning


BHDP Architecture and the Future of Work

In a trans-disciplinary UC Forward course called the Future of Work, students addressed the changing social and professional needs of the modern workplace in the context of an ongoing revolution in technology which demands supportive settings for innovative knowledge-generating workers. The collaboration was initiated by Duke Energy in 2015 and subsequently spearheaded by BHDP Architecture to address concerns about future workforce development and to define trends in the evolution of the workplace. BHDP Architecture used the collaboration to position itself as a market leader in office design.

Read the article "The Workplace of the Future: Students learn to be comfortable with ambiguity", co-authored by Dominic Iacobucci of BHDP Architecture and Aaron Bradley of the University of Cincinnati for BizEd magazine.


Standard Textile Challenge

This Inquiry to Innovation course was conducted with corporate partner Standard Textile to support interdisciplinary teams of students in developing a new approach to addressing energy efficiency, privacy, and functionality for the windows of the future. A research and development engineer from the company led the teams through design and patenting processes to produce four proposals, two of which were selected for cash awards and further development.


The Urban Wilderness Project

This course was developed at the request of the Camping & Education Foundation (CEF), a local non-profit organization that aims at "bringing the woods to inner-city kids." Students worked directly with CEF experts to develop actionable strategies for engaging local inner-city children in outdoor leadership opportunities. Outcomes included youth program proposals and concepts for new facilities which were instrumental in gaining approval from the Cincinnati Park Board to establish a permanent presence in Burnet Woods.