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Small Grants Program

Description

The Center for Teaching Excellence annually requests proposals from the faculty for small grants to support their teaching efforts. The purpose of this Small Grants Program is to supply the faculty with necessary resources to support their own development as a learning-centered teacher. Especially encouraged are proposals that can demonstrate how the funding will be used to grow a larger project that will have a direct impact on student engagement in and outside of the classroom.

The grant cycle each year is as follows:

• October = Call for proposals
• November = Proposals are reviewed
• December = Award letters are distributed. Award contracts are signed.
• Dec / Jan = Grant funds are distributed
• Spring or Summer = Projects are implemented and assessed
• End of September = Final reports are due

Grant Application for 2011-2012 Academic Year

2010-2011 Grant Recipients and Their Projects

Each year, VCU faculty and staff from a broad range of disciplines submit high-quality applications to our Small Grants Programs; this year was no exception. For the 2011-2012 award cycle, the applicant pool has become more competitive given that we had a 54% increase in the number of proposal submissions from the previous year. After much discussion and deliberation, the review committee recommended eight of the forty submissions as candidates for funding. The proposals receiving funding for the 2011-2012 award cycle are:

• Developing effective teaching practices in art history: Graduate Teaching Associate (GTA) enhancement workshops by Dina Bangdel, Department of Art History
• Chromotheater - A course in the theater of color by Corin H. Hewitt, Department of Sculpture and Extended Media
• Using bug-in-the-ear technology to improve graduate student therapist skills by Heather A. Jones, Department of Psychology
• Rethinking precalculus: An inverted classroom by Christian A. Mason, Department of Mathematics and Applied Mathematics
• Virtual artifact curation and archaeological field schools: Three-dimensional digital data collection for artifact analysis and interpretation by Bernard K. Means, School of World Studies
• Inside Out Richmond by Kristin E. Reed, University College
• Implementation of skills support in LON-CAPA for Math 141: College Algebra by Rebecca A. Segal, Department of Mathematics and Applied Mathematics
• Active learning and student engagement in biological anthropology by Amy Rector Verrelli, School of World Studies

Congratulations to this cohort of recipients, and a sincere thank you to all who submitted proposals for review. A dedication to teaching and learning at VCU was clearly reflected in each and every application.

Previous reports

View featured reports from 2001 to 2011.