Grantmaking

Home > Grantmaking > Grants in Higher Education

Grants in Higher Education

TEAGLE FOUNDATION GRANTS IN HIGHER EDUCATION

FRESH THINKING
FACULTY WORK AND STUDENT LEARNING IN THE 21ST CENTURY


February 2012

Council of Public Liberal Arts Colleges
 Distance Mentored Undergraduate Research: Leveraging Consortium-wide Faculty Expertise to Enhance Student Learning
Project Leader: Bill Spellman

 

 $150,000 over 27 months to facilitate development of a new model of supporting undergraduate research: one that would allow an undergraduate at one of COPLAC's member campuses to carry out an undergraduate research project under the guidance of a faculty member at another campus via electronic technologies. This model has the potential to open up multiple areas of disciplinary expertise that are not available to undergraduate researchers at individual member colleges, and would effectively offer students the range of faculty expertise more commonly associated with a large research university. This project has the potential to demonstrate the benefits of re-configuring faculty work to share expertise across campuses, modeling a financially viable way to maximize educational opportunity for students.

Independent College Enterprise
 Implementation Grant Proposal for Collaborative Course Delivery
Project Leader: Ed Welch

 

 $150,000 over 25 months for Bethany College, Davis and Elkins College, Emory and Henry College, West Virginia Wesleyan College and the University of Charleston which have developed a bold and innovative plan to develop a model of course delivery that relies on two key strategies: (1) sharing faculty appointments for teaching in two areas and (2) blending electronic and face-to-face instruction to make this sharing feasible. Rather than duplicate this offering at each college, the new instructor will consult with representatives of the mathematics departments of participating institutions as she or he designs and offers the new course that will be offered -- electronically -- to students at all institutions. This centralized instruction will be supplemented by a "local facilitator" on each campus who will be able to work with students face to face. The participating institutions will assess these course offerings rigorously, through modified versions of traditional student evaluations, other modes of instructor evaluation, and through direct assessment of student learning. The performance of students who participate in distance learning classes will be compared with those who take the same subjects on campus.

November 2011

Higher Education Policy Institute
 Curriculum Simplification Project: Proof of Concept Analysis
Project Leaders: Joni Finney and Bob Zemsky

 

 $49,875 over 12 months to engage in research project focused on the concept of streamlining college curricula to help increase college graduation rates and control costs in higher education. This project entails working with two liberal arts colleges to analyze the transcripts of all students as they make their way through the curriculum. The data will allow the researchers to statistically model a streamlined curriculum that will yield increased graduation rates and lower costs.

Great Lakes Colleges Association
 GLCA Lattice for Pedagogical Research and Practice
Project Leaders: Richard Detweiler and Greg Wegner

 

 $150,000 over 24 months to strengthen the quality of teaching by engaging campuses in discussions - and use - of research on teaching and learning, and heightening the value that these campuses place on doing and using this kind of research. This project consists of four major initiatives. The first is to train facilitators (Teagle Fellows) to work with groups of faculty on the application of research on learning to the work of teaching. Second, teams of Teagle Fellows and GLCA staff will visit consortium members' campuses to foster conversations about research on teaching and learning. Third, faculty will carry out scholarly research on the impact of the changes on their teaching. Finally, the grant will help the GLCA and the Teagle Fellows to create a communications network.

PLANNING GRANTS


New York Six Liberal Arts Consortium
 Faculty Work and Student Learning in the 21st Century
Project Leader: Amy Cronin

 

 $15,000 over 11 months to develop one or more strategic projects aimed at re-imagining faculty work through a development process that includes planning meetings with the faculty working group, focus groups, policy research, as well as formative and summative assessment. The New York Six Liberal Arts Consortium consists of Union, Colgate, Hamilton, Hobart & William Smith, St. Lawrence, and Skidmore.

Southeastern Pennsylvania Consortium for Higher Education (SEPCHE)
 Building Faculty Capacity for 21st Century Teaching
Project Leader: Beth Moy

 

 $15,000 over 6 months for a planning project to focus on helping faculty move toward teaching approaches that make use of a metacognitive framework. The researchers will develop and test specific pieces of a metacognitive model and potential interventions by and with faculty, with the ultimate aim of fully implementing a faculty development model.

May 2011

University of Southern California
 Student Success as Faculty Profiles Radically Shift: Creating Institutional Solutions for Non-tenure Track Faculty Majorities and Student Learning
Project Leader: Adrianna Kezar

 

 $30,000 over 24 months to conduct a modified Delphi policy study with experts - including campus and system leaders, policymakers, scholars, union staff, and association leaders - to problem solve and generate solutions for non-tenure track faculty majorities and enhanced student learning. The results of the study will initially be disseminated through a partnership with the American Association of Colleges and Universities.

PLANNING GRANTS TO CONSORTIA

Association of American Colleges and Universities
 Integrative Faculty Leadership for Liberal Education
Project Leader: Carol Geary Schneider

 

 $20,000 over 6 months to study the relevant scholarly literature on integrative learning, conduct interviews with leaders at a dozen universities that have focused on making integrative learning a key focus, and hold a national meeting informed by this prior work, with an eye toward articulating promising practices that can be more widely used in academia. The planning period will produce a concept paper, case studies, new content for summer institutes, and a plan for a subsequent implementation project.

Associated Colleges of the Midwest
 Planning Grant: Acting on the Implications of New Understanding of Faculty Work and Student Learning in the 21st Century
Project Leader: Christopher Welna

 

 $15,000 over 6 months to engage in an intensive planning process that will begin with a day-long meeting of the Deans of its member colleges, designed to identify the specific project focus. Possibilities include: (1) building on the results of the consortium's Teagle-funded project that focused on the development of innovative teaching practices informed by research on how people learn; (2) a project on how current definitions of faculty work affect the use of "high impact" teaching practices and what changes in curriculum and elsewhere might foster the development of such practices; and (3) the development of courses by teams. Once the focus of the project has been agreed on, a team will be charged with preparing a proposal for an implementation grant.

Associated Colleges of the South
 Planning for a New Paradigm
Project Leader: Wayne Anderson

 

 $15,000 over 6 months to develop a "new paradigm" for teaching and learning on its member campuses - a "blended learning" paradigm that combines creative use of technology with face to face teaching. This initiative grows out of ongoing conversations at the consortium, has the support of key campus leaders, and will bring together key academic and technology personnel to develop pilot projects that will offer courses or course modules, tutorials and/or seminars online.

Council of Public Liberal Arts Colleges
 Faculty Work and Student Learning in the 21st Century
Project Leader: Bill Spellman

 

 $14,902 over 6 months to strengthen student learning by sharing disciplinary expertise across campuses, focusing especially on developing a network of expertise on which students can draw on for undergraduate research projects. As part of this work, the Council will consider how this way of working affects faculty work and reward structures, and will build in ways of assessing student learning and the overall success of the project. The planning process will involve working meetings with - and surveys of - faculty, provosts / deans, and presidents of participating colleges, all aimed at the development of an implementation proposal.

Great Lakes Colleges Association
 Innovative Pedagogy Network
Project Leader: Rick Detweiler

 

 $15,000 over 6 months to form a network of faculty fellows who will - in small teams - visit the consortium's member campuses to work with interested colleges on developing innovative teaching practices based in current research on how people learn. During the planning process, consortium leaders will build and consult with a network of interested faculty, develop bibliographic resources for the project, and convene a planning meeting to develop a full proposal.

Imagining America
 Civic Professionalism: A New Paradigm for Undergraduate Liberal Arts Education
Project Leader: Jan Cohen-Cruz (Imagining America), Amy Koritz (Drew University), and Paul Schadewald (Macalester College)

 

 $15,000 over 6 months to explore the potential of "civic professionalism" - understood as a bridging of civic and professional life, of practical and intellectual learning - for strengthening teaching and learning in the arts and humanities. A central goal of the planning process is to develop models for such work that will focus on the ways in which faculty organize their research, teaching, as well as wider civic and professional commitments. Such models may include: (1) new ways of helping faculty members engage in public concerns while receiving credit and support for that participation and (2) new structures for helping faculty develop coordinated courses driven by social issues rather than discipline-based curricula.

Independent College Enterprise
 Planning Grant Proposal for Collaborative Course Delivery
Project Leader: Edwin Welch

 

 $15,000 over 6 months to develop a course model by which a course taught by an experienced faculty member at one institution is available at the others via web-based technology, with junior faculty or graduate students monitoring the course at those other institutions. Presidents of the participating institutions will drive the planning of this project, fleshing out the curricular model and building support for the initiative on their campuses.

New American Colleges and Universities
 Preparing and Evaluating 21st Century Faculty Aligning Expectations, Competencies, and Rewards
Project Leader: Lynette Robinson

 

 $15,000 over 6 months to: (1) develop a consortial plan for faculty professional development that acknowledges and rewards faculty members for their effectiveness in teaching and student learning and (2) identify concrete ways to measure and evaluate faculty work in light of expanding 21st century expectations, especially in non-standard learning environments.