UCI School of Education Team Named Tools Competition Finalist

​By Sofia Del Fine
April 11, 2026

Spark, a key initiative within the UC Irvine Measuring Undergraduate Success Trajectories Project, is a mobile-first, Canvas-embedded guidance platform that supports student success through personalized insights. By integrating institutional data with tools like Canvas, Handshake, and CampusGroups, Spark provides students with tailored dashboards that connect academic engagement, extracurricular involvement, and career development into a single, student-centered dashboard. 

We are proud to share that Spark has been selected as one of 16 finalists in the national Tools Competition, which is awarding more than $3 million this cycle to advance the next generation of educational tools. Spark is competing in the Building Pathways to Postsecondary Success track, recognizing its potential to meaningfully improve how students navigate and succeed in higher education.

“Spark brings together academic and career service data—and soon extracurricular engagement data—to help students navigate their path from college to career,” said Faith Ann Couts, co-Principal Investigator and Ph.D. student at the UC Irvine School of Education. “As a Ph.D. student, seeing this research reach the students it’s meant to serve has been incredibly meaningful. This finalist recognition affirms that the research-to-practice bridge we're building at UCI is worth crossing.”

This work is led by an interdisciplinary team committed to advancing student outcomes, including Richard Arum (Principal Investigator, UC Irvine School of Education), Faith Ann Couts (co-Principal Investigator, UC Irvine School of Education), June Ahn (co-Principal Investigator, UC Irvine School of Education), Jeremy Thacker (UC Irvine Office of Information Technology), and Ray Vadnais (UC Irvine Office of Information Technology). Together, the team brings expertise across education research, technology, and student success to drive Spark’s continued development and impact.