Course Design Minigrants for Graduate Instructors
Seven faculty teaching graduate courses in the humanities and humanities adjacent areas (i.e. arts and social work) have been awarded a $1000 stipend to redesign their graduate courses to foster a more equitable, inclusive and student-centered pedagogy. They will collaboratively experiment in designing courses to be imaginative, inclusive, and transformative not only in thinking about how graduate training can prepare students for various careers, but also how graduate curriculum can be enriched by diverse voices and perspectives.
Participants will receive support from the Humanities for the Public Good leadership and from our partners, Liberating Structures coaches Fisher Qua and Anna Jackson, as well as from Anna Flaming, Interim Director of the Center for Teaching. Generously funded by the Mellon Foundation, these awards have been granted to faculty across six departments in the College of Liberal Arts and Sciences and the School of Social Work.
Summer 2021 Minigrant Recipients:
Paula Amad, Cinematic Arts
Course title: Success in Graduate Studies
Meriam Belli, History
Course title: Readings in Middle East History: Global Perspective
Tara Bynum, English and African American Studies
Course title: Studies in African American Literature: Six Degrees of Phillis Wheatley
Megan Gilster and Carolyn Hartley, School of Social Work
Course title: Critical Lens into the Social Work Profession (team-taught course)
Jan Steyn, Literary Translation and French
Course title: Translation as Public Advocacy and Professional Practice
Deborah Whaley, English and African American Studies
Course title: Critical Dialogues in Cultural Studies: Stuart Hall
Goals and Structure
Grant recipients will work together in small groups this summer to (re-)design a graduate course to achieve one or both of the following:
- Create a class or assignments in which they invite students to connect their disciplinary methods and content with challenges students are facing—from dealing with a pandemic to resisting racism to addressing environmental or social or cultural issues.
- Design a course or assignments to prepare students for careers outside the academy.
Awardees will meet as a group (virtually) to share plans, set goals, and design their course throughout the summer term. The cohort will reconvene before the Fall 2021 semester to discuss each other’s courses, the learning process of course redesign, and share their course content with HPG to connect students across degree programs and interests.
uihumanitiesforthepublicgood.com 