Announcing Winners of the Student Challenge Competition for 2025!

The Workforce Development and Research Lab (WDRL) is pleased to announce the winners of the 2025 Student Challenge Competition!

The first prize of $1000 was awarded to Dadang Sunandar, PhD student in the HRD program of the OLPD department, for his proposal for an applied research project  called “Analyzing and Aligning the Higher Education Program’s Curriculum with Workplace Demands in the Human Resources Development Field.” As Dadang stated in his application, “the proposed study will tackle the diminishing alignment between HRD programs’ graduates' knowledge, skills, and mindsets and those demanded in the workplace.”

The second prize of $500 was awarded to Nathan Price, PhD student at the Department of Organizational Leadership, Policy, and Development, for his proposal titled “Building the Dream Building Academy to Impact All”. The proposed research study will support the creation of “an innovative platform that leverages gamification, simulation tools, and AI-driven insights to foster high school students’ self-awareness, career exploration, and future-proof workforce skills.”

Dadang and Nathan will be invited to join the WDRL as fellows and will pursue their research over the next twelve months under the mentorship of WDRL faculty members. Upon completing their projects, fellows will present their findings and serve as resources for future cohorts.

The WDRL would like to congratulate Dadang and Nathan and thank all other participants in the 2025 Student Challenge Competition.

The Student Challenge Competition was open to all graduate students in CEHD. The objective of the WDR Lab 2025 Student Challenge was to spark innovative, interdisciplinary programming, scholarship, and research to address complex issues of workforce development, while also creating a cadre of ‘change agents’ whose projects, stakeholder engagement, knowledge generation, and dissemination enhance the workforce development opportunities for underrepresented and marginalized groups. 

As part of the College of Education & Human Development, the WDRL aims to develop actionable research, tools, and strategies to meet emergent workforce challenges facing organizations and communities in Minnesota, nationally, and internationally.