Inclusive Excellence in Teaching Grant Opportunities

Important Dates:

Budget Information:

Mini-Grant Information:

Proposal Information:

Eligibility

Please assemble all parts of the proposal as noted below into a single PDF, and email to Stearns Center by 11:59 pm on or before the application deadline, with the subject line “2024 Mini-Grant Proposal.” Email Stearns Center (stearns@gmu.edu) with any questions. 

Project Summary (no more than 150 words).  

Narrative (No more than 400 words)  

Letter(s) of support from chair(s) and/or dean(s)   

For each unit involved with the grant proposal, provide a short support letter, from either the department chair or the dean of the unit (or another appropriate individual in your unit administration), that addresses the desire for a project like this one and their support for sustaining this kind of resource or programming in the future.  

Budget 

Provide a budget breakdown which details costs for each item.  Grants can be requested for up to $3000 total.  They can include faculty stipends of up to $500/person.  For any stipend, please calculate any required fringe costs that will need to be paid out of the grant monies (the Fringe rate for Special Pay, which is what these stipends are, is 7.3%, unless you are employed at Mason Korea then your fringe rate is 18%, and the Fringe rate for Student Wage is 6.8%, usually).  We currently recommend compensating faculty at a rate parallel to NSF guidelines for reviewers, e.g. $280/full day or $35/hour, but you may prefer a different rate or an overall stipend rather than one pegged to specific (estimated) hours. Identify any expenses for materials (e.g. print/video), student wages (not preferred for this grant type), gift cards, or professional development spending.  

Stearns Center and the ARIE Instructional Support and Incentives Working Group are providing curriculum development grant opportunities to faculty for 2023-2024. 

Anti-Racist and Inclusive Teaching (ARIT) curriculum design notes for this cycle of awards: 

1. Anti-racist and inclusive excellence: ARIE deliberately foregrounds actions that faculty can take to identify and then mitigate the harm that institutionalized racism brings to Black and Indigenous people, and all people of color, in a university setting. Proposals may also consider structures and strategies to redress other forms of discrimination; we encourage proposals that promote intersectional thinking about racism, inclusion, equity, and justice as related to a discipline, profession, or field of inquiry. 
2. Curricular rather than strategy focus: Stearns Center is currently developing other programming to support individual faculty to improve their anti-racist and inclusive teaching strategies. Therefore, Course and Curriculum Grant proposals should emphasize curricular change. 
3. High impact curricular change: The ARIE grants program emphasizes extended, collaborative change that embeds a pathway of student learning throughout a curriculum or within a single high impact course. In line with that goal, the Instructional Support and Incentives Working Group seeks proposals that go beyond ordinary, individual course revision. 
4. Not just modules or added representation: While short modules addressing anti-racism, equity, justice, or inclusion can enhance a course, transformative learning requires integrated and sustained attention. In addition, we seek proposals that go beyond increased representation of diverse perspectives. Curricular change should focus on designing opportunities for students to have regular, direct engagement with discipline-relevant questions of or skills related to anti-racism, inclusion, equity, and justice; course systems (content, activities, and/or assignments) need to incorporate approaches that reduce the harm of systemic racism. 

For more information about revising course content, design, or assessment, please review and refer to Stearns Center’s resources on Inclusive Teaching. 

Proposals for extended-impact curriculum building could include the following: 

• Curriculum Grant: Proposal to revise and/or design a cluster or sequence of three courses in a department or program to scaffold student learning, focusing on anti-racist and inclusive course content and/or course assignments so that students engage directly with historical and/or contemporary questions of racism, discrimination, justice, and equity related to the field of study, and/or benefit from structural changes to combat systemic discrimination. 
• Course Grant: Proposal to create a new single course or fully redesign a single course that has extended reach: A single course with extended reach might be one that crosses disciplinary boundaries, is routinely offered in multiple sections, and/or is central to students’ experience in the major or track. The course must focus on anti-racist and inclusive course content and/or course assignments so that students engage directly with historical and/or contemporary questions of racism, discrimination, justice, and equity related to the field(s) of study, and/or benefit from structural changes to combat systemic discrimination. 

Application Instructions 

Please submit the following as a single PDF to stearns@gmu.edu by May 2, 2023 at 11:59pm: 

2023 Course or Curriculum Grant with an ARIE Focus application

Please note that Stearns Center for Teaching and Learning members and affiliates (faculty fellows, graduate assistants, and similar) are not eligible to apply as PI or members on these grant teams.

Faculty Capacity Building (FCB): To complement central support provided via Stearns Center and other ARIE-related programming, and to aid in scaling-up efforts across campus, we encourage departments, programs, colleges, and schools to develop resources that can support faculty in ongoing improvements to anti-racist and inclusive teaching within the department, unit, program, or college. That is, instead of creating a course to support students, FCB grants create resources to support faculty in supporting students: developing mentors or ambassadors, creating guides or repositories, assisting with long-term curriculum planning, etc. These efforts might include (but are not limited to) the following: 

• Increasing leadership capacity regarding Anti-Racist and Inclusive Teaching (ARIT) through a learning community or group-study model that will prepare more faculty or graduate students to be ambassadors or mentors to others in their field around ARIT curriculum and pedagogy improvements 
• Creation of (discipline- or profession-specific) guides to anti-racist and inclusive teaching that enhance rather than replicate materials already available at Mason, or adapt material available elsewhere to a Mason-specific implementation; these might be text- and/or video-based, or involve synchronous or asynchronous cohort-based learning 
• Creation of (discipline- or profession-specific) repositories of anti-racist and inclusive teaching materials, assignments, activities, and/or model syllabi that directly support Mason faculty or courses.  Please note that these should be more than a recommended reading list, but instead contain created content to discuss the materials, summaries of recommended readings, and similar.  The grantees should plan to work with the Stearns Center to make these repositories widely available (e.g., not on a password-protected site). 
• Completion of large-scale curriculum audits that will enable coordinated planning around anti-racist and inclusive course sequencing within or across programs.  These should include group planning within the unit, detailed analysis of existing structures and needs, and stepwise future directions with unit-level buy-in.

Application Instructions

Please submit the following as a single PDF to stearns@gmu.edu by May 2, 2023 at 11:59pm: 

2023 ARIE Faculty Capacity Building Grant application

Please note that Stearns Center for Teaching and Learning members and affiliates (faculty fellows, graduate assistants, and similar) are not eligible to apply as PI or members on these grant teams.

Stearns Center and the ARIE Instructional Support and Incentives Working Group seek proposals for Spring 2023 mini-grants supporting curriculum or professional development efforts related to anti-racist and inclusive teaching (ARIT).

To aid in scaling-up anti-racist and inclusive teaching efforts across campus, we encourage departments, programs, colleges, and schools to invest in expanding in-progress projects to effectively increase local capacity for faculty learning, course- or curriculum-development, or pedagogy-related programming. Capacity extending grants should be designed to ripple out: faculty who participate in Anti-Racist and Inclusive Teaching (ARIT) CEM projects will be expected to contribute in some way to a department’s, area’s, program’s, or course’s future faculty as they continue implementing anti-racist and inclusive teaching.  

We imagine these grants will primarily take the form of stipends to faculty who are part of a pilot project and who will contribute to publicly available resources that will extend the reach and durability of that project. A key criterion for evaluating grant proposals will be the sustainability and/or broad impact of the faculty work.  Specifically, funding will not be given for only learning about ARIT principles for a faculty member’s personal use. 

Examples of possible mini-grant projects include (but are not limited to) the following: 

• Development of course modules or materials designed for adoption by multiple instructors teaching in a course or curricular area 

• Pilot implementation and assessment of course modules or materials designed for multiple instructors teaching in a course or curricular area 
• Design of faculty development/training curricula and materials to support a current course, course sequence, or curricular area 
• Registration costs for an ARIT related event, local/regional/national, with a specific proposed local deliverable for the Mason program, department, school/college, or campus community 
• Faculty+student learning community or affinity group regarding ARIT principles/issues, to build collaboration and resources that will support curriculum and pedagogy development for a course or area 

Individuals or teams who received an ARIE Grant (Kickoff Grant, Course Grant, or Capacity Building Grant) in 2022 are eligible to apply for a CEM to extend or enhance their current work in Spring 2023. Proposals are also invited from teams that have not yet received an ARIE grant, especially if they have evidence of ARIT-related work already underway that this grant could support. 

Application Deadline: Monday, January 30 

Grant Activation (estimated): Monday, February 20 

Grant Conclusion: All work and payments must conclude by Friday June 9 

Maximum grant: $3000 

Maximum payment to any individual: $500 

Eligible expenses:  

• Instructor stipends as allowed by rank, status, and local academic unit regulations
• Student wages or gift cards 
• Purchase of registration or print/video materials 
• Honoraria for external speakers or consultants 

Food is generally not an eligible expense. 

Please assemble all parts of the proposal as noted below into a single PDF, and email to Stearns Center by 11:59 pm Monday, January 30, with the subject line “Mini-grant Proposal.” Email Stearns Center with any questions. 

Submission Guidelines: Capacity Enhancing Mini-grant  

Project Summary (no more than 150 words).  

What learning and/or resources will your efforts create, and how can your department/program/unit leverage the results to support faculty in multiple courses in improving their teaching related to anti-racist, inclusive courses and pedagogies that foreground equity and justice? Proposals that attend to the needs of term or adjunct faculty, to the teaching or support of introductory courses in any level of degree program, and/or integration with program-level assessment (APR) will be highly regarded.  

Also include the names, titles, and units of all key participants, including a department or division staff member who will be responsible for supervising the disbursement of grant funds. (Does not count toward your 150 words.) 

Narrative (No more than 400 words)   

1. ARIT-related goals: Identify the key goals for how the effort, programming, events, and/or assessments will address calls for anti-racist, inclusive, and equitable teaching through alterations to course content, assessment of learning, curriculum alignment, and/or pedagogical strategies for student engagement. Your plans should support an integration of inclusive and equitable resources/strategies rather than isolated elements of a course or curriculum. (See more information on the Stearns Center site).
2. Outcomes: Briefly describe the current project, plan, resource, or effort, and any resources already invested in that project. List two or three intended outcomes for the proposed new effort, programming, event(s), and/or assessment(s) that are directly related to ARIE/ARIT principles. Identify any particular faculty groups, courses, programs, or curricular pathways that you intend to have significant impact on. Describe what feedback, resources, and/or leadership capabilities will result from this new effort, and how they will continue to “ripple out” to future instructors.
3. Implementation:  What is your timeline for designing, engaging with, and/or piloting this project? What steps or stages will the project involve, and who (actual/estimated) will be involved with each? Please also indicate that you have checked with a finance staff member in your unit to ensure that the participants you plan to support are eligible for any stipends you plan to disburse.

Letter(s) of support from chair(s) and/or dean(s)   

For each unit involved with the grant proposal, provide a short support letter, from either the department chair or the dean of the unit, that addresses the desire for a project like this one and their support for sustaining this kind of resource or programming in the future.  

Budget 

Grants can be requested for up to $3000 total. They can include faculty stipends of up to $500/person; for any stipend, please calculate any additional required fringe costs that will need to be paid out of the grant monies. We currently recommend compensating faculty at a rate parallel to NSF guidelines for reviewers, e.g. $280/full day or $35/hour, but you may prefer a different rate or an overall stipend rather than one pegged to specific (estimated) hours. Identify any expenses for materials (e.g. print/video), student wages or gift cards (graduate or undergraduate), honoraria, or professional development spending.  

Please email your letter (and accompanying unit-leader affirmation for redesign grants) to Stearns Center (SUBJ: ARIE Mini-Grant Application).

Stearns Center and the ARIE Instructional Support and Incentives Working Group are partnering with Undergraduate Education to provide curriculum development grants to faculty for 2022-2023 through the Impact Grants program.

To apply, please follow the directions provided for all Impact Grants. Applications are due April 22, 2022.

In the Narrative section of your proposal, please indicate that you would like to be considered for an ARIE-focused grant (this will not disqualify you from consideration for QEP-related or general impact grant support, but it will help reviewers assess your plans).

Anti-Racist and Inclusive Teaching (ARIT) curriculum design notes for this cycle of awards:

1. Anti-racist and inclusive excellence: ARIE deliberately foregrounds actions that faculty can take to identify and then mitigate the harm that institutionalized racism brings to Black and Indigenous people, and all people of color, in a university setting. Proposals may also consider structures and strategies to redress other forms of discrimination; we encourage proposals that promote intersectional thinking about racism, inclusion, equity, and justice as related to a discipline, profession, or field of inquiry.
2. Curricular rather than strategy focus: Stearns Center is currently developing other programming to support individual faculty to improve their anti-racist and inclusive teaching strategies. Impact Grant proposals should emphasize curricular change.
3. High impact curricular change: The IG program emphasizes extended, collaborative change that embeds a pathway of student learning throughout a curriculum or within a single high impact course. In line with that goal, the Instructional Support and Incentives Working Group seeks proposals that go beyond ordinary, individual course revision.
4. Not just modules or added representation: While short modules addressing anti-racism, equity, justice, or inclusion can enhance a course, transformative learning requires integrated and sustained attention. In addition, we seek proposals that go beyond increased representation of diverse perspectives. Curricular change should focus on designing opportunities for students to have regular, direct engagement with discipline-relevant questions of or skills related to anti-racism, inclusion, equity, and justice; course systems (content, activities, and/or assignments) need to incorporate approaches that reduce the harm of systemic racism.

For more information about revising course content, design, or assessment, please review and refer to Stearns Center’s resources on Inclusive Teaching.

Proposals for extended-impact curriculum building could include the following:

1. Curriculum Grant: Proposal to revise and/or design a cluster or sequence of three courses in a department or program to scaffold student learning, focusing on anti-racist and inclusive course content and/or course assignments so that students engage directly with historical and/or contemporary questions of racism, discrimination, justice, and equity related to the field of study, and/or benefit from structural changes to combat systemic discrimination
2. Course Grant: Proposal to create a new single course or fully redesign a single course that has extended reach: A single course with extended reach might be one that crosses disciplinary boundaries, is routinely offered in multiple sections, and/or is central to students’ experience in the major or track. The course must focus on anti-racist and inclusive course content and/or course assignments so that students engage directly with historical and/or contemporary questions of racism, discrimination, justice, and equity related to the field(s) of study, and/or benefit from structural changes to combat systemic discrimination

Faculty Capacity Building: To complement central support provided via Stearns Center and other ARIE-related programming, and to aid in scaling-up efforts across campus, we encourage departments, programs, colleges, and schools to develop resources that can support faculty in ongoing improvements to anti-racist and inclusive teaching within the department, unit, program, or college. That is, instead of creating a course to support students, FCB grants create resources to support faculty in supporting students: developing mentors or ambassadors, creating guides or repositories, assisting with long-term curriculum planning, etc. These efforts might include (but are not limited to) the following:

1. Increasing leadership capacity regarding Anti-Racist and Inclusive Teaching (ARIT) through a learning community or group-study model that will prepare more faculty or graduate students to be ambassadors or mentors to others in their field around ARIT curriculum and pedagogy improvements
2. Creation of (discipline- or profession-specific) guides to anti-racist and inclusive teaching that enhance rather than replicate materials already available at Mason, or adapt material available elsewhere to a Mason-specific implementation; these might be text- and/or video-based, or involve synchronous or asynchronous cohort-based learning
3. Creation of (discipline- or profession-specific) repositories of anti-racist and inclusive teaching materials, assignments, activities, and/or model syllabi that directly support Mason faculty or courses
4. Completion of large-scale curriculum audits that will enable coordinated planning around anti-racist and inclusive course sequencing within or across programs

Application deadline April 22, 2022.

Please email a document following the directions on the attached information sheet to Stearns Center (SUBJ: ARIE Capacity Grant Application).

Stearns Center and the ARIE Instructional Support and Incentives Working Group seek teams of 3-8 people to engage in a May/June 2022 effort to design or implement initial anti-racist and inclusive teaching efforts (ARIT) for a course, program, department, or other academic unit. (See Stearns Center’s resource page for more specific options.) Projects should support/implement sustained learning rather than quick reviews of tips or strategies, and result in new materials and/or actions ready for implementation in Fall 2022.

Proposals must fit into the 2021-2022 budget year: all stipended work must be completed, and all relevant materials purchased, by June 20, 2022. Projects might include (but are not limited to) the following:

1. Extended workshop or reading group: Participants invest at least 6-8 hours’ time in guided discussion or interaction (beyond preparatory reading or materials review) leading to creation or revision of teaching approaches or course materials ready to implement in their own and/or other local classes in Fall 2022 and/or Spring 2023.
2. Curriculum audit or needs assessment: Participants design and/or implement a significant initial review of local needs (program or department) for improvements to anti-racist and inclusive curriculum or pedagogy. Review must cover a full program or track (not just a few individual courses); implementation of the review process may be included in the kickoff period, but if the kickoff period is used primarily for design purposes, reviews should begin no later than Fall 2022.
3. Workshop or materials development: Participants design initial resource guides or workshop opportunities specifically for use by local faculty (course, program or department) that can be made available by the start of Fall 2022.
4. Pedagogy leadership plan development: Participants are identified or confirmed as an official local leadership team regarding anti-racist and inclusive pedagogy; they create a two- or three-year action plan focused on specific improvements to anti-racist and inclusive pedagogy and curriculum, and obtain program or academic unit approval to initiate implementation of that plan starting in Fall 2022.
5. Team professional development: Participants from a local unit identify a regional, national, or international professional development opportunity related to anti-racist and inclusive teaching that is available in May/June 2022 and receive funding to cover registration or travel costs; they create a plan to implement new strategies and share their learning with other colleagues starting in Fall 2022.

• Maximum workshop/reading group/student participant rate: $35/hour (based on current NSF reviewer standards)
• Maximum leadership/materials developer rate for faculty: $50/hour
• Maximum participant or speaker stipend or professional development support: $2000
• Minimum participants: 3 (may include faculty from any status, as well as graduate or undergraduate students)
• Maximum participants: 10

All projects must provide at least one shareable takeaway — guide, plan, resource, survey, initial report — for publication on the Stearns Center website.

Application deadline April 22, 2022.

Please email a document following the directions on the attached information sheet to Stearns Center (SUBJ: ARIE Kickoff Grant Application)