Teaching Innovation Grants: Applications

The Provost’s Office, through the Center for Teaching and Learning, is pleased to provide annual Teaching Innovation Grants for Brandeis faculty. These grants are intended to promote excellence and innovation in teaching by means of evidence-based practice.

Grant recipients

Areas of Focus

All proposals that address innovation in teaching at the course, department, program, area, division or school level will be considered. Preference will be given to projects that address one or more of the following:

• Antiracist, equitable pedagogies: projects that combat systemic inequities in education by providing equitable learning experiences with specific benefits for traditionally underserved students (including BIPOC, first-generation and low-income students). Such pedagogies might include one or more of these Nine Evidence-based Teaching Practices That Combat Systemic Inequities or other antiracist approaches.
• Projects that use materials from Brandeis archives including the HistoryMakers Digital Archive to enrich the antiracist identity work of our institution and the learning experiences of our students
• Diversifying course materials, curricula and teaching methods to represent a greater variety of voices, traditions and modes of thought
• Engagement: projects that support active, experiential, self-reflective and/or community-serving academic work by Brandeis students.

Eligibility

All members of the Brandeis teaching community may participate in Teaching Innovation Grant projects, while the following are eligible to apply as principal investigators:

• Tenured faculty
• Tenure-Track faculty
• Contract faculty on multi-year contracts
• Part-time faculty who have taught at least three courses in the previous three years, and who are contracted to teach at Brandeis during the 2021-2022 academic year.

Guidelines

Eligible expenses include:

• Summer stipends for planning
• Costs associated with attendance at courses, seminars, conferences, trainings, faculty development institutes or workshops
• Teaching assistants or student workers
• Publications about teaching and learning
• Travel (when approved given COVID restrictions) and admissions fees (e.g., for museums, sites, archives)
• Supplies for reading groups
• Evaluators

The following are not eligible expenses for Teaching Innovation Grant funds:

• Food
• Academic year salary
• Equipment

Budget Guidelines

• Stipends are usually $1,000 - $2,500 per person, depending on the amount of work involved.
• Calculate student wages according to your department’s or program’s guidelines.
• Include 27.4% fringe costs for faculty stipends and 7.7% for summer graduate  and undergraduate student payments. (Graduate and undergraduate student payments during the academic year are not subject to fringe costs.)
• Projects that require funding beyond the term of the grant (July 1, 2021 – June 30, 2022) must include a letter of commitment from the relevant dean or vice president.

Criteria for Selection

A selection committee consisting of Mary-Ann Winkelmes, executive director, Center for Teaching and Learning, representatives from the Committee on Teaching, Learning and Assessment, former Teaching Innovation Grant recipients, and representatives from each school and division will review proposals and make their recommendation to the provost by April 2021. They will evaluate proposals according to these criteria.

1. the significance of the project and scale of the need
2. the viability of the timeline and budget
3. how Brandeis students and educators will benefit from the project
4. what artifacts and measures will fully capture and communicate the project’s impact
5. how the project’s findings and materials can serve the Brandeis teaching/learning community and any communities beyond Brandeis

Project Support

The Center for Teaching and Learning staff and CTL Scholars, the Library’s Instructional Designers and other Library staff, Student Accessibility Support staff, the Materials Research Science and Education staff and other campus collaborators will offer a variety of instructional design and other services to help you plan, design and implement your innovation. Any questions should be directed to Mary-Ann Winkelmes, executive director of the Center for Teaching and Learning.

Proposals are due March 8, 2021

access the application form

Download a copy of the questions from the application form (pdf).

Applicants will receive notification by May 2021. Recipients will present their outcomes at a campus wide forum and share their findings on the Center for Teaching and Learning website.