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The Open Call

About Our Open Call

The Carolina Collective Open Call is a crowdsourcing campaign aimed at developing strategies for the fall semester, that are driven from the ‘bottom-up’ by ideas from the Carolina community. We will draw on our community strengths to identify strategies that would be useful for implementation in the fall.

What we are looking for?

We are looking for four kinds of ideas to inform how the fall semester looks and feels in the COVID-19 era:

  • Public health campaign – How might we make the (virtual and physical) campus safe while continuing the things you are passionate about? This could be a public health COVID-19 campaign for a specific group of students, for the entire university, or for the broader Triangle student community – your choice.  This could include digital hashtags/slogans, images for masks or posters, or videos.
  • Inclusive digital dialogue – How might we create a more effective bidirectional digital dialogue within and between our university groups?  This could be a plan for a mobile phone application, a website, or another digital platform.
  • Collective action – How might we draw on our collective strengths to translate voices into action? The end-goal should be a more safe and equitable Carolina community. We are particularly interested in voices from students, staff, faculty, and local residents.
  • Re-thinking safety  –What are ways of creating and maintaining safety that are respectful and anti-racist? Consider practical applications in your strategy; we are especially interested to hear ideas related to adherence of community safety standards.

Judging process

We will use a standardized process developed by the World Health Organization. Each submission will be reviewed for eligibility by at least three independent individuals. Eligible submissions will then be reviewed by at least five independent judges (process for selecting explained in the FAQs below). Judging criteria will include the following: potential impact on the safety and well-being of the university community; innovation; feasibility; inclusivity in terms of gender, ethnicity, disability. Individuals who are semi-finalists will be provided feedback to strengthen their ideas.

Prizes

We have $20,000 in prizes to award for submissions, including awards for exceptional ideas and participation prizes for a random 5% of all submissions. The steering committee will make final decisions about all prizes. All individuals or groups who have excellent contributions (mean score of 7/10 or greater) will receive a commendation from the Carolina Collective Steering Committee. Excellent contributions from each category will be shared with the UNC Chancellor, Dean of Students, and relevant leadership to be implemented at UNC.

We will have special prizes for teams that include students, staff, and faculty; people who have been diagnosed with COVID-19; those who are currently self-isolating because of COVID-19. Selected finalists may be also given an opportunity to take an elective course for credit in the fall to further develop their plan.

How to get involved?

Please visit the Get Involved tab for more information about how you can be part of this exciting event!