2012 - 2013 CETL Faculty Development Grants
The CETL Faculty Development Grants Program supports faculty who wish to improve their teaching and mentoring skills. The program acknowledges disciplinary differences and values a wide variety of styles in teaching and learning. All faculty members are encouraged to apply.
This year’s competition provides small student-centered grants to support implementation of proposals in two areas – Community Engagement/Service Learning and Undergraduate Research Mentoring. Both Community engagement and undergraduate mentoring are demonstrated high-impact practices that support student success.
Through the process of proposal design, implementation and assessment, faculty will reflect on their own development and goals as teacher-scholars, and improve their skills in community engagement and/or student mentoring.
Criteria for Selection
Community Engagement/Service Learning proposals will be evaluated based on these criteria:
- The service learning course must be identified and taught during the grant period
- The degree to which the course fits into a degree program or other curriculum (GE, minor, certificate) and demonstrates publically engaged teaching practice.
- The selection committee is especially interested in proposals that assess the effectiveness of reflection assignments. See: http://www.compact.org/disciplines/reflection/
Undergraduate Research Mentoring proposals will be evaluated using the following criteria:
- The degree to which the project supports student learning and student success, not just faculty scholarship
- Scope and significance (including the number of students who will benefit (up to four students may be mentored)
Proposal Guidelines
- Fill out a Service Learning grant application (PDF) (Word)
- Fill out a Undergraduate Research Mentoring application (PDF) (Word)
- Funds are available for use during Winter and Spring Quarters, 2013.
- Funds may be used for the following: lab and other supplies, books, software, and hiring of student assistants. Please provide a brief but detailed budget, justifying all planned expenditures. Funds cannot be used for faculty compensation or release time.
- Grants applications are reviewed and awardees recommended by faculty members of the CETL Advisory Board and 2011-12 grant winners.
- Faculty will be notified by email from the CETL Director, and funds made available to the College resource managers Fall Quarter. All funds must be encumbered by April 15, 2013.
- Final reports are required for all grant awards as detailed below.
- The deadline to submit a proposal is noon on Monday, November 5, 2012.
Category 1: Community Engagement | Service Learning Grants (up to 10 grants are available at up to $1,000 per grant)
Purpose: This award supports faculty who are currently teaching a service learning or civic engagement course. Proposals should enable faculty to reflect on this specific course type.
Universities across the country commonly focus on service learning/civic engagement outcomes that emphasize the following knowledge, skills, and attitudes:
- Civic Action and Reflection: the ability to participate in and/or lead a team in complex civic engagement activities coupled with analysis and reflective insight about the goals of one’s actions
- Civic Contexts and Structures: the ability to work across and within community contexts and structures (political, organizational) to achieve social change and/or a civic aim.
- Civic Commitment: a sense of identity that includes commitment to civic/public action
- Civic Communication: effective communication that fosters relationships that further civic/public action
- Diversity: the ability and disposition(s) to work within diverse communities and cultures
- Engaged Production of Knowledge: the application of disciplinary knowledge in contexts of public engagement for civic/public action and/or social change
Rationale: Higher education is renewing its historic commitment to preparing graduates as public citizens. Publically engaged teaching is one way of achieving student success, but remains a complex concept to grasp (AAC&U). For faculty applying to this grant there are salient questions: What are civic learning outcomes in these types of courses? How do faculty know their course outcomes have been achieved? What constitutes student success here? Applicants will propose to measure the development or levels of attainment of knowledge, skills, and attitudes associated with the course. Methods of assessment include but are not limited to: pre-and post-surveys; rubrics; student focus groups; rating scales and process books/journals and individual meetings.
This grant provides funding for up to $1,000 in teaching-related supplies, materials, and services.
Eligibility: Applicants who will teach a service learning course during the 2012-2013 academic year (F/W/S) or faculty currently involved in creating a service learning class to be offered during in 2012-2013 are eligible. The selection committee will also consider applications for assessment of service learning courses taught during the 2011-2012 academic year if the applicant can establish the existence of sufficient data such as student papers or hold focus groups with former students.
- The course must include assignments that provide students with the opportunity to reflect on their service learning experiences.
- Awardees must develop and finalize an assessment protocol/instrument
- Awardees must schedule individual meetings (at least 2) with:
- Michael Willard, Faculty Director of Community-Based Learning or
Other service learning mini-grant awardees (or other faculty as appropriate)
- Faculty must submit a final report to the CETL and the Faculty Director of Community Based Learning by June 21, 2013. This report:
- Briefly summarizes the Scholarship of Teaching and Learning on Service Learning and its assessment in your discipline and/or more generally
- Includes a syllabus listing outcomes and assessment strategies.
- Reflects on the development or levels of attainment in evident in students’ knowledge, skills, attitudes and values related to AACU criteria.
- Reflects on the development of, and/or revisions of, service learning pedagogy (assignments, teaching techniques) in relation to the data generated from the assessment
- Faculty may be invited to present to the campus as part of future CETL programming
Recommended reading
AAC&U Criteria for evaluating civic engagement courses can be found at: http://www.aacu.org/value/rubrics/pdf/CivicEngagement.pdf
Eyler, J. (2003). Reflection: Linking service and learning—linking students and communities. Journal of Social Issues, 58, 517-534.
Category 2: Undergraduate Research Mentoring Grants (up to 10 grants are available at up to $1,500 per grant)
Purpose: This award is intended to help develop faculty mentoring skills by supporting faculty who wish to engage undergraduate students in meaningful research, scholarship or creative activities outside of the classroom. Undergraduates benefit significantly from such experiences, but require a strong mentor relationship to do so (Guterman, 2007). Faculty should provide a high impact learning experience by working with students to introduce them to disciplinary norms, topics, and the intrinsic creativity of a field.
Generation of new knowledge is not necessarily a primary outcome of the project. Rather, under the guidance of faculty, students should be allowed to experience tackling mature subjects, where they are asked to make meaningful connections with subject matter (Schantz, 2008). This experience typically takes the form of a “research apprenticeship” where students serve as apprentices to a faculty project. However, other mentoring models may also be proposed.
As part of the evaluation of project innovation, reviewers will take into account the previous research mentoring experience of the applicant, and availability of other funding to support student engagement in research. Preference will be given to proposals that name student participants. Faculty in all disciplines are encouraged to apply.
Deliverables
- Faculty must complete a brief post-project electronic survey about the mentoring experience by June 21, 2013.
- Students will complete a separate electronic survey on what they had learned through the project, including their acquired skills and experiences, by June 21, 2013.
- Recipients should plan on submitting their project to the annual Student Symposium on Research, Scholarship and Creative Activity.
- Faculty with exceptional proposals may be invited to present to the campus as part of future CETL programming.
Recommended readings
Guterman, Lila. (2007, August 17). What good is undergraduate research, anyway? Chronicle of Higher Education, 53 (50), 12.
Schantz, M.S. (2008). Undergraduate research in the humanities: Challenges and prospects. CUR Focus, 29 (2). Retrieved 12/13/11 from http://www.cur.org