2009 Provost’s General Education Course Enhancement Grant Competition

Teach what excites you! Connect your discipline and expertise with General Education!

The General Education Course Enhancement Grant Competition is designed to promote the ongoing enhancement, innovation, improvement and academic rigor of the content and teaching of UConn’s General Education curriculum.

Considering the impact of the budget crisis on our university, this year’s competition is geared toward helping academic departments and faculty meet some of the current and future challenges. It will therefore favor proposals seeking to improve existing courses, specifically those intended to meet the challenges of large lectures or online course offerings. Due to the funding crisis, the Office of the Provost has reduced the overall amount of this year’s competition.

Approvals: All proposals require department head or program director approval. The offering of all substantially revised or new Gen Ed courses is pending approval by the respective departments, college C&CCs, GEOC, Senate C&CC, and Senate: http://geoc.uconn.edu/Approval_Summary.html. Be it expressly understood that receiving a Provost’s General Education Course Enhancement Grant does not yet constitute approval of the proposed course for the respective content area(s) and/or competency; successful grant proposals will still have to submit a Curricular Action Request form to the GEOC for approval and must follow the approval sequence outlined above.

Awards: Awards may vary in amount, from $1,000 to a maximum of $8,000 ($4,000 max. per year) per proposal. The award may be applied to summer salary, course related expenses, or to a faculty member’s research account. This amount is inclusive of fringe benefits and a budget form is required to justify proposed expenses.

Preliminary Informational Workshop: February 24, 2009 from 2-3pm in Center for Undergraduate Education (CUE) room 320. Please RSVP to GEOC@uconn.edu by February 19, 2009.

Proposal Deadline:  Friday, March 20, 2009.

Who May Apply:  Regular tenured, tenure-track, and non-tenure-track faculty from any University of Connecticut campus.  An application may be submitted by one or more individuals, but must have the written support of a sponsoring program or department that expects to offer the course every, or every other, academic year for at least five years at one or more of the UConn campuses.  The program is open to faculty in all disciplines.

Evaluation Criteria:  For this year’s competition, the proposal may focus on significantly enhancing the content or pedagogy of an existing course or developing a new course. It should very clearly explain how the course meets UConn’s broad goals of general education as well as the specific criteria for the given content area(s) (Arts/Humanities; Social Sciences; Sciences; Diversity and Multiculturalism) and/or competency(W, Q) as described in UConn’s General Education Guidelines http://geoc.uconn.edu/geocguidelines.htm.  Student learning outcomes, and ways of assessing them, must be outlined. Successful proposals will be expected to serve as a model for future efforts in strengthening UConn’s General Education curriculum. In many cases, they may simultaneously strengthen their home department or program.

Again, this year, applications that focus on the following (overlapping) areas will be favored:

• Modification and improvement of an existing course to be offered online.
  
• Modification and improvement of an existing course to be offered in much larger classes.
• Proposals intended to enhance global learning (here, too, we will give special consideration to online or large lecture courses).
• Proposals intended to enhance learning about environmental issues (here, too, we will give special consideration to online or large lecture courses).

Proposal Format and Submission: Please follow the suggested proposal format, which can be found at http://geoc.uconn.edu/ProvostCompIndex.htm. The text of the proposal should be no more than two-three pages (at least 10 pt font, 1 inch margins) and include

• a clear statement of the project’s relation to the general education requirements (broad and specific),
• its objectives (including student learning outcomes), and
• a plan for the assessment of student learning (how will it be measured?) once the course is offered. 

Each proposal should include a completed budget form together with a statement of support from the appropriate program director(s) or department head(s).  An electronic copy of the proposal should be sent to GEOC@uconn.edu with the Subject Line “Provost’s General Education Course Development Grant”. Successful proposals from previous competitions can be found on the GEOC website: http://geoc.uconn.edu/ProvostCompIndex.htm.

Evaluation Committee:  Proposals will be reviewed by a committee of faculty and representatives from the office of Undergraduate Education and Instruction.

Project Timetable:

March 20, 2009           Proposal Deadline.
Mid/late April 2009      Awards announced.
Fall 2009                     Curricular Action Request form submitted to GEOC for inclusion in the new general education                                     curriculum in time for the 2009/2010 catalog.  The project need not be completed or near                                     completion at this time.
April 2010                   First year progress report due.
AY 2010/11                Course taught.
May 2011                    Final report due.

Contact: For further information, contact Katharina von Hammerstein (Chair, General Education Oversight Committee) at von.Hammerstein@uconn.edu or (860) 486-2441.