Departmental Teaching Initiative Fund

The CAT offers financial support to departments and programs seeking to enhance teaching and learning in their programs of study.  Funds will be distributed on a first-come, first-serve basis.  Departmental Teaching Initiative Funds may be used for a variety of teaching and learning development activities, such as purchasing books for group reading and discussion; bringing in a speaker with expertise in a specific teaching and learning topic; and purchasing food for meetings associated with these development activities.

The teaching and learning development activities may take a variety of formats and must address a teaching or learning need that broadly impacts the department or program.  Department and program teaching and learning development activities funded by the CAT can be done independently, combined with a request for CAT facilitation of the development activities, or done in conjunction with more extensive CAT-department/program partnerships.  Topics that may be particularly salient to departments or programs include:

• Evaluating and enhancing programs of study to ensure that they are just, equitable, diverse, and inclusive for all potential students;
• Learning and applying strategies for managing difficult classroom discussions common to a particular department or discipline;
• Reflecting and iterating on current student learning assessment practices and processes to promote continuous improvements in student learning;
• Designing of assignments to align with outcomes and provide equitable evidence of learning across instructors or courses;
• Investigating evidence-based best practices from broad and discipline-specific literature and applying them to specific courses or the overall curriculum.

Please contact Anita McCauley if you wish to talk more about ideas for how the Departmental Teaching Initiative Fund can support the teaching and learning development needs of your department or program.  The ideas listed above are just a sampling of how these funds may be used.  We are excited to work with you and support you in whatever ways are best to advance the teaching and learning in your department or program.  Please visit the CAT Departmental Support webpage to learn more about ways that the CAT supports department and program efforts to advance teaching and learning.

Application

Applications are accepted throughout the year, but funds are distributed on a first-come, first-served basis.