The Bush Foundation Program Grant
at the University of St. Thomas

The University of St. Thomas received a Bush Foundation Program grant for 2005-08 to improve undergraduate education. 

The purpose of the grant is to improve students' higher-order thinking skills by employing more inquiry-based instruction and faculty/student collaboration:

Higher-order thinking skills go beyond memorization and recall to apply knowledge to new situations, make inferences, evaluate evidence, analyze data, and express results. Inquiry-based instruction is a family of pedagogies that incorporate the investigative processes actually used in the disciplines. Among the methods used in this kind of teaching are case studies, action research, community-based problem solving, field investigation, and research-based or discovery-oriented instruction. These teaching methods model the "real-world" work of the academic disciplines.  See the guidelines and/or the grant renewal proposal for more details.

The Bush grant funds four sets of programs:

1) grants to faculty for course revision:

· Core and Core Area Grants: to enhance inquiry-based teaching of core and core area courses
· Freshmen Paired Course Grants: to implement inquiry-based teaching methods in Freshmen Paired courses
· Entry-Level Course Grants: to enhance inquiry-based teaching of a discipline's first course, when that course is neither Core, Core Area, or Freshmen Paired
· Non-Entry Level Course Grants: to enhance inquiry-based teaching of, typically, Junior or Senior-level courses

With any of the grants above, a faculty member can apply for a stipend to team up with an faculty member experienced in the family of Inquiry-Based Learning pedagogies, or attend bi-weekly teaching circles.

2) Dissemination and Scholarship of Pedagogy Grants:

· Dissemination Grants: to disseminate Collaborative Inquiry results at conferences
· Scholarship of Pedagogy Grants: to disseminate findings about the family of Inquiry-Based pedagogies.

3) grants to students and their faculty mentors for student/faculty collaboration:

These grants are administered through the Young Scholars program. The Young Scholars program awards $3,000 to a student and $500 to their faculty mentor for collaborative scholarship. Students submit a proposal in April and are funded for 12 weeks of work during the summer. (More information about the Young Scholars program is available fat www.stthomas.edu/urcs.

4) grants to departments for summer research and scholarship programs:

These grants support speakers, lunches, field trips, etc., during the summer, for building a community of scholars.

Information on how to apply for these grants is contained in these guidelines on the left side of this web page.

The full 15-page text of UST's grant renewal from the Bush Foundation is available at the link to the left, called "UST Bush Renewal Proposal 2005-08.

The Bush Grant Implementation Committee consists of:

Robert Werner, PhD, Geography, Program Director                
Ivancica Schrunk, PhD, History, Program Coordinator             
Lynn Hartshorne, PhD, Chemistry
Bernard Armada, PhD, Communication
Ellen Kennedy, PhD, Marketing
Heather Bouwman, PhD, English
Steve Laumakis, PhD, Philosophy
Kris Bunton, PhD, Journalism
Britain Scott, PhD, Psychology
Leigh Lawton, PhD, Marketing
Susan Smith-Cunnien, PhD, Sociology
Rob Riley, PhD, Economics and Director of Faculty Development

For questions, contact either Dr. Robert Werner (rjwerner@stthomas.edu, 651-962-5565) or Dr. Vanca Shrunk (idschrunk@stthomas.edu, 651-962-5740).