Beverly Nagel and Marci Sortor are pleased to solicit a third round of proposals from faculty members at Carleton and St. Olaf for grants to advance curricular collaboration.
Proposals must be submitted online by Friday, April 17, 2015, for projects that take place between during summer 2015. (Awards will be announced by Friday, May 15.)
TYPES OF PROJECTS
As in the first two rounds of grants, faculty and staff members can submit applications for two main types of projects (described below) as well as projects that do not fit neatly into these categories. The “Broadening the Bridge” website includes a list of the projects funded by the first round of grants in spring 2014 and the second round of grants in fall 2014.
- Exploration Grants for Inter-College Collaborations
We expect to award between four and six “Exploration Grants” of up to $5,000 each to teams of faculty who seek to initiate or continue exploration of making courses and programs accessible to students on both campuses.
- Visiting successful joint programs at other liberal arts consortia.
- Staging joint department retreats to discuss existing curricula and potential areas for coordination.
- Beginning to develop new shared curriculum (for example, a shared course or course module).
- Piloting strategies to address the challenges inherent to differing academic calendars—for example, exploring “flipped classrooms” that combine online course modules with traditional “synchronous” in-class experiences.
- Targeted Opportunity Grants
We expect to award two or three larger “Targeted Opportunity Grants” – covering expenses up to and including the costs of course releases (or equivalent expenses) – to teams of faculty members (or faculty members and students) who seek to develop and pilot more ambitious joint curricular projects, including projects with experiential learning components:
- Allowing a faculty member to work with colleagues on both campuses to align prerequisites and curriculum structures so as to permit cross-registration and provide greater coverage and depth.
- Facilitating intensive work by a team of faculty, either through course releases or summer support, toward developing a jointly-offered major in an “emerging field.”
- Supporting the development and launch of collaborative engaged learning experiences for students such as research seminars.
- Launching intensive summer research collaborations, including research that capitalizes on our colleges’ distinctive assets: our libraries’ special collections, our college archives, the Carleton Arboretum and St. Olaf Natural Lands, et cetera.
- Sponsoring joint academic civic engagement projects in the local community that involve courses and students from both campuses.
Note that both Exploration Grants and Targeted Opportunity Grants should serve to develop and test curricular ideas. Successfully completed, these projects might be eligible for follow-on grants, in the form of course releases, to offer shared courses that would be team-taught by pairs Carleton and St. Olaf faculty members.
APPLYING FOR A GRANT
To submit a proposal, complete the “Broadening the Bridge” grant application form by Friday, April 17, 2015, for projects that take place between during summer 2015. (Awards will be announced by Friday, May 15.)
The application form asks for four types of information:
- The applicants’ names, departments/programs, and college affiliations; the names of the applicants’ department/program chairs.
- Information on the project (title, one-sentence summary, a specific period of support, a 625-word description).
- A budget (including faculty stipends at the rate of $600 per week per faculty member, travel costs, materials, or services) and a brief explanation of budgeted costs.
- A short statement on the likelihood of securing additional funding. (The capacity or interest to apply for additional funding is not a requirement for either applying for a “Broadening the Bridge” grant or being awarded one.)
PROPOSAL REVIEW
Aiming to announce awards by Friday, May 15, proposals for Exploration Grants and Targeted Opportunity Grants will be evaluated by a committee of administrators and faculty from the two colleges. Proposals will be evaluated according to their potential to
- support exploration and pilot activities that seem likely to mature into substantive collaborations over several years;
- clearly benefit formal classroom curricula and experiential learning;
- advance the colleges’ goals of fostering exceptionally strong teaching and research; and
- address specific goals for departments or programs that have been previously identified as significant by faculty members, academic leaders, outside reviewers, or other stakeholders.
QUESTIONS
Contact the appropriate administrator at your institution:
St. Olaf
- Marci Sortor, Provost and Dean of the College (sortor@stolaf.edu, 507-786-3004)
- Helen Warren, Director of Government and Foundation Relations (warren1@stolaf.edu, 507-786-3009)
Carleton
- Bev Nagel, Dean of the College (bnagel@carleton.edu, 507-222-4303)
- Christopher Tassava, Associate Director of Corporate & Foundation Relations (ctassava@carleton.edu or 507-222-5833)