SABBATICAL AND SEMESTER LEAVES

Wallace Grants Travel and Scholarly Activities Grants that support faculty scholarship. Click here for guidelines and Click here application form. Applications submitted in November will be considered for the current academic year. Applications submitted in February will be considered for next academic year.

Beltmann Fund for Faculty Development in the Natural Sciences
Faculty members in the natural sciences are invited to apply for grants of up to $2,000 to defray expenses involved in attending devoted teaching or pedagogy workshops, teacher-training programs, or pedagogy-related conferences. Examples include, but are not limited to: weekend workshops on adopting team-based learning approaches in the natural sciences; conferences on new teaching strategies in STEM disciplines; summer seminars devoted to redesigning lab-based instruction, etc. Awards will be made on the basis of:

• brief description of the teaching/pedagogy event you hope to attend
• proposed budget
• short description of how you intend to use your newly acquired knowledge in your classes or laboratory instruction.

Send proposals to Kendrick Brown, Associate Dean of the Faculty.

December 15, 2011

The Mellon Curricular Pathways Grant offers funds to support the creation of new courses that support and expand the following three interdisciplinary programs and their concentrations. Humanitarianism and Human Rights, Community and Global Health, and Urban Studies. Courses should be implemented during the 2012-2013 academic year. Grants will consist of faculty stipends along with funds to allow the development of team teaching, civic engagement, or other substantive teaching/learning activities. All funds must be spent by August 1, 2012.

Criteria for Approval of New Courses
Each proposal should consider and explicity address the specific needs of the program(s). Proposals must be accompanied by a letter of support from the director of the intended program:

Humanitarianism and Human Rights
Jim Dawes

Community and Global Health
Devavani Chatterjea, or Jaine Strauss

Urban Studies
Daniel Trudeau

In addition, because each course will be housed in a department, a letter of support from the department chair must be included.

Range of Funding
Only proposals for new courses will be considered. Total budget per proposal should not exceed $3,000. Expenses may include summer stipends or Faculty Travel and Research funds (up to $1,500). Proposals may also include: books, DVDs, or other course development materials; travel to appropriate conferences, institutions, or field sites; work-study funds so that students may help to arrange activities (trips, films, gatherings); and honoraria for visiting scholars/speakers.

Criteria for Funding
Proposals that do not relate to any of the three concentrations will not be considered. Proposals that relate the concentrations to each other, or that speak to issues that have wide interest across the curriculum will also be considered. The Mellon Curricular Pathways co-directors will take into account the following factors:

Selection Process
Each program will be asked for input. Funding may be adjusted to provide consistency among all awardees. The final decision will be made by grant co-directors Karin Aguilar-San Juan and Dave Lanegran.

How to Apply
Please include six sections in your proposal in this order:

• Summary. Write a one-paragraph summary of the course.
• Narrative. Describe the course, its goals and objectives, its relevance to one or more concentrations. Tell how you will meet your course objectives.
• Timeline. Clearly indicate when you intend to complete the work you describe in the proposal, and the semester in which the course will first be offered. Indicate whether or not the course will be taught in future semesters.
• Budget. Provide an itemized budget with a rationale for each item.
• Letters of Support. Include two: one from your department chair and one from the program director toward which your proposal is intended.
  Other Materials. Enclose any other material you believe would help us make our decision: for example, a syllabus, an annotated bibliography, an exemplary student paper.

Urban Faculty Colloquium, (August 2011)

The Urban Faculty Colloquium (UFC) brings together faculty at all ranks and all levels of familiarity with the Twin Cities for several days of intensive study of the relationships between a range of contemporary issues and the local, metropolitan context.

Over the past decade, Macalester faculty and staff have accumulated a wide and deep range of experiences related to urban, community, and civic engagement. Our pedagogical innovations have encouraged students to merge their academic interests with issues that shape people’s lives outside the classroom and throughout the world.  Meanwhile, our partnerships with organizations and communities have also opened up new possibilities for scholarship and advocacy. What have we learned about the various forms of “engagement”? What lessons might we draw about how, why, when, and where to engage with others? In what ways might Macalester continue to support civic engagement efforts on behalf of faculty, especially those who are either in the early stages of their careers, or new to the Twin Cities?

The Summer/Fall 2011 iteration of the Urban Faculty Colloquium will involve a total of six days spread over three months of retrospection, discussion, and planning about Macalester’s programs for urban and civic engagement. We highly encourage full participation by those faculty who have participated in any one or more of the Urban Faculty Colloquia or Seminars offered since 2005 in the Twin Cities, New Orleans, or Chicago.

August 2-3, 2011: Retrospective
These four half-day retrospective sessions will allow us to gather, sift through, and categorize the lessons learned from our experience with various forms of engagement. Throughout the sessions, we will make it possible for all faculty to join the conversation regardless of degree of familiarity with “engagement.” Indeed, questions about how urban or civic engagement activities fit at different points in a professor’s career could be an interesting topic of discussion in any session.

September22-24,2011:Imagining America
The 2011 national conference of Imagining America is co-sponsored by Macalester College and the University of Minnesota. This year’s theme is “What Sustains Us?” Applicants who are interested in attending this conference are encouraged to join the sessions in August and October.

October 1, 2011: Moving Forward
This full-day session will allow us 1) to review lessons learned from our August retrospective, 2) to gather insights and impressions from Imagining America’s national meetings, and 3) to create a plan for next steps for Macalester’s faculty development programs.

To apply, please describe your past experience with the Urban Faculty Colloquia or Seminars (specific details are appreciated!), and tell us how or what you might contribute to the Summer/Fall 2011 sessions.

We will provide a stipend of $1,000 to participants who complete all six days as described above.  We will also cover the registration fee for those attending the Imagining America conference.

Send applications to Theresa Klauer (klauer@macalester.edu). For more information contact Karin Aguilar San Jan.