Professor Elizabeth Boling has received a Fulbright U.S. Scholar Program award for a project to create and fund cultural tourism projects in Guatemala.

The project, done with the Department of Design and Innovation at the University of the Valley of Guatemala, will include women in several villages near Lake Atitlan. It is a co-design project, a form of design in which people who are going to use a product or program are fully involved in creating it. This approach is not the norm for many educational designers, so Boling’s project will help her offer a model for this type of design to the field.

“The Fulbright program is defined as cultural exchange and ambassadorship; therefore, every project needs to benefit the host country as well as the scholar. My research project focuses on two outcomes - culturally appropriate methods for indigenous communities to develop tourism locally in a way that is sustainable and equitable for the whole community, and new insight into how we teach instructional designers so that they are prepared to engage in co-design respectfully and responsibly,” Boling explained.

For much of her career, Boling has studied design models and pedagogy, and also conducted a prior study in Guatemala. While there, her collaborator introduced her to several young women engaged in trying to improve their communities through cultural tourism. 

“I could see that co-design might help them reach their goals, and that the difference between our two cultures would make this form of design a great fit for stress-testing co-design itself,” she said.

“I believe this work will be important because many cultural tourism projects do not result in outcomes that are equitable to those who participate in them and a blueprint for seeking funding could help stop this problem before projects even start,” Boling added. “The value to my field will be that a model and example project will exist which goes beyond getting feedback from stakeholders or carrying out some joint activities with them. We can address how designers see ourselves as co-designers in a process where we are not centered as the most important players in the process.”

Boling’s project will go from January-May 2026.