Summer Sandbox Grants

At its best, E Term functions as a sandbox where faculty have the space and resources to develop new skills and experiment with new ideas. Undergraduate Studies (UGS) has set aside funding for individuals or groups of faculty to try new techniques and explore new pedagogy working in the summer.  

There are a few initiatives we are most interested in supporting:    

Artificial Intelligence  

• Develop courses within a major that teach AI tools relevant to the discipline.
• Develop teaching methodologies for courses to address the challenges of AI. 
• Develop AI tools that support teaching.  

Enhanced student engagement strategies  

• Build activities or courses to connect first-year students to the departmental culture.
• Build courses that support sophomore student success and development.
• Strategies to incease the face-to-face student interactions

Novel approaches to effective online teaching 

• Develop engaging and effective online courses within the constraints of E Term  

Convince us! 

• Your great ideas, which we have not thought about, might be just the right thing! 

Summer Sandbox Grants can support experimentation in an individual course, or they could be used to bring together groups of faculty over the summer to develop new strategies or approaches to teaching and learning. We expect that much of the work will be completed in the summer and that courses will be deployed within the next academic year.