For All Bush Proposals
Collaborative Inquiry:
Improving Teaching and Learning at the University
of St. Thomas
Bush
Foundation Program Grant 2005-08
Summary of the Bush Grant
The central idea of the Bush Foundation’s grant to UST for
undergraduate faculty development is to improve students’ higher-order thinking
skills by employing more inquiry-based instruction and increasing the levels of
faculty/student collaboration.
Higher-order
thinking skills go beyond memorization and recall to apply knowledge
to new situations, make inferences, evaluate evidence, analyze, and express
results. Inquiry-based instruction (IBL) is a family of pedagogies which
puts problems, questions, or investigations first and then structures learning
around the pursuit of those ‘answers’.
Rather than week 1-chapter 1/week 2-chapter 2 instruction, the textbook
and classes are used as resources that students use to pursue the
investigation. Thus, IBL can include case studies, problem-solving,
community-based studies, discovery- or project-based activities, and any other
pedagogies that pose an investigation or problem as the primary educational
technique, structuring other instruction as needed. Inquiry-based methods are intended to help students refine their
critical-thinking and problem-solving skills.
Instead of relying on lectures, note-taking and memory-driven tests,
inquiry-based learning is a more hands-on environment that helps students
actively engage their disciplines.
These teaching methods model the “real-world” work of the academic
disciplines.
More information about higher-order thinking skills and IBL
is available at www.stthomas.edu/bushgrant. See especially the document called
“Higher-Order Thinking Skills” and “Definition of IBL” posted on the Bush Grant
website. Assessment tools are posted on
the website too, so you can find out if in fact your students improved their
higher-order thinking skills.
Whether you’re a full-time or adjunct professor, tenured or
non-tenured, as long as you teach undergraduates, you’re eligible for UST Bush
grant funding to make your teaching more inquiry-oriented.
The broad goals
and specific objectives of the grant
are to:
1. Goal:
enhance student learning by improving
higher-order thinking skills.
Objectives: To increase students’ level of
conceptual understanding and their ability to apply knowledge to new
situations, think independently, and evaluate and communicate their inquiry
process.
2. Goal: encourage inquiry-based methods of instruction across
the curriculum.
Objectives: To
provide models that successfully apply inquiry-based methods and to increase
faculty/student collaboration across the curriculum.
3. Goal: infuse collaborative inquiry into the
culture of the University of St. Thomas.
Objective: To publicize the effect of
inquiry-based methods on student learning and classroom instruction.
Together with UST matching funds, the Bush Foundation’s
grant award is for $1,000,000 over three years, 2005-2008. Many of those funds will be re-granted
through four sets of programs. The following grants are available for
revision of a whole course or a module.
UST Bush grant programs 2005-08
Our programs in 2005-08 will
continue to sponsor undergraduate faculty development seminars, such as the
well-received Best Teaching Practices workshop in the summer. We will also fund the following re-granting
programs (programs with an asterisk are new):
1) grants to faculty for course revision
· Core and Core Area Course Grants: to
raise students’ higher-order thinking skills through inquiry-based teaching of
core and core area courses
* Freshmen Paired Course Grants: to implement IBL in Freshmen Paired courses.
* Entry-Level Course Grants: if your course is the first course a student
would take in your discipline, but is neither a Core, Core Area, nor Freshmen
Paired course, e.g. Business 200, Marketing 300, Education 210, Engineering
150, Social Work 281, etc.
· Other Course
Grants: for any undergraduate course that does not meet the three
categories above.
2) Dissemination
and Scholarship of Pedagogy grants
· Dissemination
Grants: to disseminate faculty/student collaborative inquiry results at
conferences (category A); or to host an undergraduate research conference (category
B).
* Scholarship of Pedagogy Grants: to
finance travel for a faculty member to present their pedagogical findings about
inquiry-based learning or faculty/student collaborations.
3) grants for
student/faculty collaboration:
There are two kinds of these grants, both administered
through UST’s Undergraduate Research and Collaborative Scholarship
program (directed by Dr. Jennifer Cruise).
· Young
Scholars grants award $3,000
to a student and $500 to their faculty mentor for collaborative scholarship
during the summer.
· Collaborative Inquiry grants provide
$1,000 to the student and $500 to the faculty member to do collaborative
research outside the classroom, usually during the school year.
4) grants to departments for summer research and scholarship
programs
· Summer Research Network Grants Departments may apply for funds to support
activities such as lunches, speakers, advertising, or field trips for faculty
and students during the summer months, with the goal of building a community of
scholars.
5) Peer Coaching stipends
* The new Peer Coaching program supports pairing of an
IBL-experienced and non-experienced faculty member to implement IBL teaching
methods.
Required
Application Forms and details of each of these grants are given
on the Bush Grant web page: www.stthomas.edu/bushgrant/. Follow the links on the left to the type of
grant you want.
Proposal Review Criteria
Reviewers must determine from the proposal narrative whether
the project can make an appropriate and effective contribution to the goals of
the Bush grant for Collaborative Inquiry.
Reviewers will be considering the following criteria:
· What
evidence is there of the need for the project?
· How,
exactly, will students’ higher-order thinking skills be improved?
· How will
the project director know that students’ thinking skills are improved (i.e. is
there a good evaluation plan)?
· Is the
project sustainable or will it end at the end of the grant period?
· Will the
project director adequately disseminate results?
· Does the
proposal follow the guidelines and is it clear, concise, and written for a
general audience?
· Does the proposal comply with the limit of four pages with
a 12-point font?
Application
Forms & Deadlines
Application forms for all of these grants are available at: www.stthomas.edu/bushgrant. Follow the link to “Proposal Guidelines,”
then to the type of grant you want.
Complete the forms there and submit with your application, which is due
by 5:00 p.m. on the following dates. These are typical times when work would
be done for a given deadline, but proposal authors may apply whenever they’re
ready.
deadline for
work beginning in: notification
date
Oct.
1, 2006 January Term or
spring, 2006 Nov. 1
Dec.
1, 2006 January Term or
spring, 2006 Dec. 15
Feb.
1, 2007 spring, 2007 Mar. 1
Apr.
1, 2007 summer 2007 May 1
July
1, 2007 fall, 2007 Aug.
1
May
1, 2007 only
for departmental Summer May 15
Research
and Scholarship Grants
Decision tree for course-revision
grants:
Is
your course Core & Core Area?
yes no
Is
it Freshmen Paired? Is
it the first course that a
student
takes in a discipline?
yes no
yes no
Freshmen Core & Entry- Non-Entry
Paired Core Area Level Level
Course Course Course Course
Core and Core Area Grants
The purpose of Core and Core Area Grants is to support
groups of faculty to plan strategies to improve students’ higher-order thinking
skills in core and core-area courses.
(Core and Core Area courses are listed in the Undergraduate Catalog 2004-06 on pages 25-30). Core and Core Area Grants are appropriate
for groups of faculty, e.g. departments or groups of faculty who teach a core
or core area course and wish to revise that course or a module of it, in a
coordinated way, or if they want to examine their curriculum in the light of inquiry-based
teaching.
Core and Core Area grants will fund groups of faculty to
attend conferences or hold meetings or retreats to learn about and plan
inquiry-based pedagogies. Such
conferences and meetings might be held in any U.S. or Canadian city, here on
campus, or at the Gainey Center. These
grants support travel, meeting costs and supporting materials, e.g. books or a
speaker. They can also be used for
stipends.
Expectations:
Products that are expected from these grants will include
concrete plans of how to revise a course or curriculum with the kinds of
pedagogies supported by this grant.
There should also be a plan to measure the effects on student
learning. Assessment tools for this
purpose are available at www.stthomas.edu/bushgrant. Additional
assessment tools will be posted on that website as they become available.
The maximum amount for Core and
Core Area Grants is $6,150 per team (calculated at Gainey rates of $205/day x
30). Available funds for both sorts of
activities in 2005-06 are $20,000.
Freshmen
Paired-Course Grants
The purpose of Freshmen Paired-Course Grants are to help
faculty implement the teaching of higher-order thinking skills in
Freshmen-Paired Courses. These grants
are intended for a deep level of integration between the two courses. Applicants should describe how students’
higher-order thinking skills will be improved.
Applicants should state what experience they have with inquiry-based education
(and, if they have little experience, they can apply for a Peer Coaching or
Teaching Circle stipend). Applications
will be stronger if they will affect more than one semester’s pair.
Freshmen-Paired Course Grants are designed to support
faculty who are making substantial changes in pedagogy of a whole course or
changes in course modules. Activities
involved might include learning about the pedagogy (readings, attending a
conference or workshop, observing faculty who use the technique or strategy),
and preparing the materials needed to implement the pedagogy in the course and
to evaluate the results, etc.
Freshmen-Paired Course Grants are primarily intended as
summer stipends for faculty, as well as funding the purchase of books,
materials, consultants, or transportation costs, to a maximum of $1,000 per
faculty member or faculty partnership. Funds available in 2005-06 are $20,000,
so support ten pairs of faculty.
Expectations:
Products that are expected from these grants will include
revised syllabi and exercises, a report describing how the pedagogies are to be
implemented in the course, and an assessment plan. Assessment tools for this purpose are available at www.stthomas.edu/bushgrant. Additional assessment tools will be posted
on that website as they become available.
Entry-Level
Course Grants
This grant program is designed for courses that are the
first course a student would encounter in your discipline, but where the course
is neither a Core, Core Area, nor Freshmen Paired course, e.g. Business 200,
Marketing 300, Education 210, Engineering 150, Social Work 281, etc.
The purpose of Entry-Level Course Grants is to raise
student’s higher-order thinking skills through the family of pedagogies called
“inquiry-based instruction”.
Entry-Level Course Grants are primarily intended as summer stipends for
faculty, as well as funding the purchase of books, materials, consultants, or
transportation costs, to a maximum of $1,500 per faculty member or faculty
partnership. Funds available in 2005-06 are $20,000.
.
Other
Course Grants
This program is for any undergraduate course that does not
meet the three categories above, e.g. a Junior, or Senior course. Requirements are also to raise students’
higher-order thinking skills through the family of pedagogies called
“inquiry-based instruction”. Grants are
primarily intended as summer stipends for faculty, as well as funding the
purchase of books, materials, consultants, or transportation costs, to a
maximum of $1,500 per faculty member.
The amount available in 2005-06 is $7,500.
Dissemination Grants
Dissemination Grants will be awarded in two categories:
A) Grants
to disseminate results of faculty/student collaborative work, when
that work contributes to the professional development of a discipline. Dissemination Grants fund travel and
conference registration when faculty and students participate together. For example, faculty and their students
could have carried out a summer research project or been funded through a UST
Young Scholars grant. The faculty
member and student(s) may apply for a Dissemination Grant to present the
results of their collaborative work at professional meetings.
B) Support
for departmental sponsorship of a statewide annual research meeting in a
particular discipline. These
conferences must clearly advance the goals of the Collaborative Inquiry
project. Allowable costs in this case
could include keynote speaker fees, conference mailings and advertising, or
food and reception expenses.
Expectations:
The Bush Program Grant Coordinator will expect to receive a
file copy or summary of materials presented at the conference.
The maximum request is $1,000/person, with a maximum award
of $3,000 for one project group. In the
case of departmental sponsorship of a statewide annual research meeting, a
total of $5,000 is allocated for this purpose in 2005-06. Available funds for
all Dissemination Grants in 2005-06 are $10,000.
· Scholarship of Pedagogy Grants:
finance travel for a faculty member to present their findings about the
pedagogies of inquiry-based learning or faculty/student collaborations. The amount available for these grants in
2005-06 is $5,000.
Summer Research Network Grants
The goal of this program is to foster the building of
research and scholarship communities among faculty and students during the
summer.
This program supports such activities as lunches, speakers,
advertising, or field trips.
A maximum of $1,000 per department is available. In addition to that amount, the person
directing the summer program in that department can ask for an appropriate
stipend to lead the program (e.g. $100).
See the UST Bush grant web page for samples.
With any of these grants, faculty members may apply
for a small stipend if they plan to work with a faculty members who are
experienced in inquiry-based instruction.
Peer Coaching Stipends
A stipend of up to $500 per faculty member is provided for
each of an experienced and non-experienced faculty member, for one
semester. Faculty are expected to meet
about weekly, attending classes with a similar frequency, and discussing how to
best raise students’ higher-order thinking skills through Inquiry-Based
Instruction. Applicants should provide
a plan, a timetable, and some assessment measures.