2026 Spring/Summer CTL Funds: Extended Projects
Stearns Center for Teaching and Learning offers Curriculum and Teaching Leadership Funds: Extended Projects funding to teams of faculty involved in a high-impact teaching and learning project. We solicit proposals from teams from all departments, programs, colleges, and schools at George Mason University, including full-time and/or part-time faculty. Faculty may not apply for multiple Stearns Center Extended Projects in the same academic term.
The strongest proposals will demonstrate several of the following attributes:
- Potential for broad impact (beyond the design of or inquiry into a single person’s course)
- Potential for lasting impact (beyond the initial year/semester of the project)
- Deliberate alignment with GMU and/or academic unit initiatives or strategic goals
- Integrative collaboration among faculty from multiple backgrounds, specializations, and/or academic units
- Specific, feasible, documentable, and sustainable outcomes that enhance student success
- Clear timeline and project-aligned budget
Funding Period: January 20 – May 24, 2026 or May 25 – August 9, 2026
Maximum Grant Amount: $4,000
Proposal Due Date: December 5, 2025
STEM CTL Extended Projects
Specifically, proposals for STEM Extended Project funding should focus on or demonstrate one of the following:
- Improve or update a course or department level curriculum. This can be approached in a variety of ways including (but not limited to) revision or redesign of assignments, new active learning approaches, inclusive teaching, increased student engagement, & improved academic success of students.
- Capacity building. Working as a collaborative team to make changes to single or multi-section course sustainability and expansion. Again, these proposals should consider how to expand student success strategies or unify a course or department’s curriculum. For this option, artifacts could include (but are not limited to), new or updated course materials (i.e., assignments, assessments) that are used by multiple instructors for the same course.
Timeline
- Proposal Submission Deadline: December 5, 2025
- Award Decisions Announced: January 9, 2026
- Project Implementation Period: January 20-May 24 or May 25-Aug 9
- Mid-term Budget Check-in Period(s): March 16-20 / July 6-10
- Final Budget Check-in: April 27-30 / July 13-17
- Final Budget Requests Due: May 9 / July 24
- Grant Conclusion: All work should conclude by May 24 or Aug 9
- Final report due: June 24 or September 9
Project Requirements and Deliverables
Engagement Requirements: All funded project PIs/teams are expected to
- Check communications regularly
- Complete two budget check-ins per semester (these can be asynchronous)
- Attend at least one mid-project consultation during funding term
- Attend at least one Stearns Center program during the funding period
Final Documentation: All funded projects must submit:
- A final report documenting project outcomes and any upcoming implementation steps
Dissemination Plan: All funded projects must include a plan for sharing with the GMU community, such as
- Intention to present (as a Teaching Talk) at the next Innovations in Teaching and Learning Conference
- Creation of a broadly applicable resource available to the GMU community
Proposal Submission
Please assemble all parts of the proposal as outlined here into a single PDF, and submit it through our online form.
Please email [email protected] with any questions.
Proposal Requirements
Project Summary: (no more than 150 words)
Briefly describe you or your team’s project, including its context, aims, and potential impact. What learning and/or resources will your efforts create?
Project Participants:
- Include the full names (indicate one principal investigator (PI)), Mason emails, titles/positions, and both College and Department of all key participants
- Include the name, Mason email, and title/position of your Financial Point of Contact (FPOC) a department or division staff member who will be responsible for supervising the disbursement of grant funds (Note: This is, typically, not the PI or your College/Department’s Chief Business Officer. Rather, this is your financial point-of-contact and someone who handles EPAF submissions, P-card purchases, etc. Sometimes there is more than one person who will need to help manage the finances for your grant.)
- Include the Organization Number (Org #) of your academic unit
Narrative: (no more than 400 words)
- Project goals: Identify the key goals of your project.
- Outcomes: Briefly describe the current course, 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, resources, and/or assessment(s). Explain how you plan to document/assess the initial and lasting impact of this work.
- 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 academic unit involved with the Extended Project 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, and provides approximate date(s) for each expense.
- Faculty stipends, up to $1000 per person per semester.
- For any stipend, please calculate any required fringe costs that will need to be paid out of the grant monies (the fringe rate for faculty special pay, like these stipends, uses the “adjunct / part-time / wage” amount listed on GMU’s Fiscal website). For example, the 2025-2026 fringe rate is 7.4% so if you are paying yourself $1,000 from your funds, the fringe cost is subtracted from that. Therefore, you will be paid $931 and $68.89 will go towards fringe = $999.89.
- Please check with your Financial Point of Contact to be sure that faculty will be eligible for the (full) award.
- Note that stipends must be paid out evenly across typical paychecks for the duration of the grant; there is often a 2-4 week lag between award funds becoming available and the first payment.
- Student wages: If you have not hired/supervised a student recently, please consult your Financial Point of Contact before completing this part of the proposal to assure accuracy
- Provide the name, status, and G# for any student who will be hired as a student wage worker to participate in the project (this project strongly discourages “student(s) to be named later” as part of the funding)
- For each student, provide the name of the participating faculty member who will be responsible for supervising work and overseeing biweekly time-sheets
- For each student, indicate the role/tasks, hourly wage, and estimated time commitment to the project
- Include fringe for any student who is not full-time
- Supplies: If you are budgeting for purchases of a kind you have not overseen recently while using Commonwealth of Virgina monies, please consult your Financial Point of Contact before completing this part of the proposal to assure accuracy
- Books, materials, subscriptions, or resource access fees must directly support the project during the funding period; one-time expenses that would need to be repeated in order to sustain the gains of this project (such as annual memberships or non-reusable study materials) are not allowed
- Research or participation support such as gift cards for study participants, stipends for expert contributions by GMU faculty, or registration fees must be directly related to the project and used during the funding period
- Funding is generally not available for
- Food or drink
- Travel
- Honoraria or payments to non-GMU personnel
- Conferences or seminars outside the funding period
We look forward to receiving your proposal! Please email Dr. Laina Lockett [email protected] or [email protected] with any questions.
2025 Summer Grants
Previous STEM Education Grant Recipients:
- Spring 2025: Sanja Avramovic & An Di Yim
- Summer 2025: Maction Komwa, William Lamberti, Angela Miller, Nicholas Rios