We recognize that you have poured a great deal of time, energy, and creativity into your teaching this semester. We have borne witness to your excellent teaching across all modalities, and we want to provide avenues to share your contributions. The surveys of the last two months have provided constructive feedback that reflects everything from excitement to frustration, all stemming from a place of dedication to your students and your expertise as faculty. Many of your comments highlighted the creative ways you are adapting to the SMUFlex and Virtual modalities. Thank you. 

As a response to your feedback, we are excited to announce a call for applications for Partner-Up Grants of $2,000 for full-time faculty to participate in faculty-led learning pods focused on priority areas that emerged as topics from the faculty surveys. Each pod will serve as a nexus for faculty to enhance their own pedagogical knowledge while sharing with colleagues. Each pod will consolidate their learning to share information out with other faculty in late January and throughout the spring semester. 

Each pod of 4-8 faculty will be formed around the following priority areas (or faculty can propose an idea for a pod):

• Content creation (e.g., pre-recording lectures and/or interactive materials)
• Student engagement techniques (e.g., leading discussions across both modalities, discussion protocols for Zoom, using breakout rooms)
• Feedback strategies (e.g., creating and/or modifying new assignments; communication loops)
• Design your own (You do not have to find partners. We’ll work to match up ideas and faculty.)
• Assessment options to ensure academic integrity

The goal of Partner Up Grants is multi-fold: support faculty helping one another with pedagogy; disseminate ideas more broadly across the academic year; and make more visible the ways that you have been navigating this year. Each pod will determine the best dissemination strategy for their ideas that can range from generating resources for the SMU Keep Teaching site, conducting workshops with CTE, developing short videos, or making presentations at department meetings. Every pod will have ongoing assistance from CTE/OIT/Libraries.

Funding priorities include the following and are open to all full-time faculty:

• Representation across a wide range of pedagogical approaches (from discussion-based to lecture-driven; from creative exploration to objective exam learning)
• Faculty drawn across a variety of disciplines from all Schools and Colleges
• Focus on all teaching modalities  

We have created a simple online application that makes it easy for faculty to apply. The link provided took faculty to the application that asked for a 250-word description of the area in which you are most interested and a 100-word description of ideas for disseminating what teams learn: 

Applications closed on Monday, November 30th

Recipients were announced on Friday, December 4^th

If you have questions or want to discuss your idea, please contact CTE via email at cte@smu.edu.

Congratulations to the 2020 Award Winners