Design Studios and Challenge

Design Studios and Challenge Overview

Design Studios are single-day opportunities that introduce school teams to the power of design thinking and help them kickstart a project or strategic deliverable for their school communities. The Fund has offered Design Studios since 2012, and school leaders have consistently described them as one of the most impactful professional development sessions they have attended.

Design Studios are learning experiences intended to bring school teams together around solving an issue in their building using stakeholder input. During the studios, school design experts lead teams through the design thinking process, including identifying a design opportunity, collecting empathy data, prototyping, testing, and implementation.

In the 2025-26 school year, The Fund is offering four studios as opportunities to advance continuous improvement work in schools, but also as a place for educators to gather, share their insights on driving change in their buildings, and celebrate their accomplishments. This program culminates in the Design Challenge, a live event where schools have the opportunity to win from a prize pool of $55,000 for their innovations.

The grand prize winners of the 2025 Design Challenge in the elementary and high school categories were Earle STEM Elementary and Chicago Tech High School, each earning $10,000. Based on students needs, Earle STEM’s team developed a social-emotional learning framework that trains teachers, tracks student behaviors, and engages parents around improving students’ emotional regulation. To support 11th graders who were slipping “off-track” for graduation, Chicago Tech’s team prototyped an initiative that follows students from ninth to 12th grade and involves career exploration, skill-building, direct community mentorship, and an opportunity for students to gain on-the-job experience in a career field of their choice.

Outcomes 

• Design Studios: A prototype of an innovative solution to a specific challenge in your school that you can implement in the current school year.                                                                                             
• Design Challenge: Funding for your innovative solution to a specific challenge in your school that you developed as part of SDP or with the assistance of our Design Webinars.

Who Should Apply? 

Principals, assistant principals, or teacher leaders in Chicago’s public schools who want to address pressing issues affecting their students, and who want to develop their leadership capacity through innovation.