Guidelines for Collaborative Events
Like Collaborative Research Projects, Collaborative Events may involve collaborations with students and faculty across disciplines on a single campus, but these grants also will be focused especially on promoting collaboration across campuses and disciplines.
Each of these proposals should also address issues of dissemination and impact. That is, the proposal should outline methods for sharing the work of the collaboration with a wider audience, through web pages or other publications. And the proposal should outline how the collaboration might result in best practices or innovations that can be adopted within the consortium and beyond.
Connecting Collaborative Event activities with Collaborative Research Projects would also be desirable. For example, the result of a conference about global warming and curricular approaches might lead to a research proposal that explores a new model of interdisciplinary and international education.
Collaborative Events can be funded in three general areas to:
A. Support collaboration by gathering faculty from multiple campuses (with students, when appropriate) to discuss substantive research topics.
- The ACM-Teagle “Collegium on Student Learning” is an example of such a project, as it will convene faculty from across the disciplines to consider research in the area of metacognition with the ultimate goal of understanding how that research informs teaching on liberal arts campuses. Previous ACM-FaCE conferences on diversity and on information literacy are also good examples.
B. Foster best practices in teaching by gathering faculty to explore approaches to advising, pedagogy, use of technology in learning, evaluation of teaching, and addressing the needs of this generation of students.
Recently-funded projects include:
- Faculty Assessment of Student Learning, Department by Department. The goal of the workshop is to demonstrate the effectiveness of a departmental, or discipline-specific, approach to developing effective practices in assessment of student learning.
- CLA in the Classroom Academy. A workshop for 30 Carleton College, Macalester College, and St. Olaf College faculty and staff focused on training faculty to do more diagnostic work with individual students and to develop their own performance tasks modeled on those of the CLA — the Council for Aid to Education’s (CAE) Collegiate Learning Assessment.
- The Teaching of Latino Studies, focusing on current course offerings in Latino Studies on ACM campuses; exchange and discussion of reading lists, bibliographies, and syllabi; and exploration of approaches to and best practices in teaching Latino studies.
- The Outdoor Classroom: Recent advances in mobile computing for the field sciences. A workshop that will bring together faculty members in the field sciences (e.g., archaeology, ecology, geology, environmental science) to discuss and explore digital technologies and specifically how GPS-enabled field computers can enhance their teaching and research.
C. Increase internationalization by enabling faculty engaged in international and multicultural studies to network, share ideas, and explore means to collaborate across campuses.
- One recently-funded proposal is a multi-step project on developing A Sustainable International Student Teaching Experience for ACM Students and Faculty. The project will begin this fall by identifying, visiting, and securing working relationships with ten to fifteen International Schools (or schools where the medium of instruction is English) in which undergraduate students from Ripon College, Colorado College, Beloit College, and Lawrence University may complete their student teaching experiences. The goal of this project is to establish relationships that can be used by all ACM schools.
Proposals, funding, and organization of events
Proposals for FaCE Collaborative Events may come from individual faculty members, groups of faculty, or the Academic Deans. The scale of these gatherings can vary from conferences or symposia that gather a large number of participants across the ACM to smaller workshops that convene fewer participants and target a subset of colleges sharing proximity or curricular features.
The ACM Advisory Board of Deans can identify campus needs, interests, and potential participants. They would also coordinate the various projects supported by the grant to maximize the collective impact (e.g., encouraging regional workshops to increase the likelihood of collaboration after the grant, identifying follow-up workshops that would allow a pilot project for an innovative international program to be further refined before being adopted fully by the consortium).
For most FaCE Phase II events, campus leaders will be responsible for organizing and coordinating arrangements on site. The ACM office will help with publicity.
Awards will be variable, ranging up to $15,000, depending on the scope of the event. Funding can cover honoraria for guest speakers, workshop leaders, or consultants (but not ACM campus participants); conference materials; and travel and accommodations (but not meals, unless in working sessions). ACM will accept one proposal for Collaborative Events from a campus each year of the grant.
More details are available in the Guidelines for Preparing a Proposal.
Deadlines: Proposals for Collaborative Events will be reviewed twice each year. Each campus sets its own internal deadlines for review and nomination prior to the Evaluation Committee's meeting; consult your FaCE liaison for details.
Please contact ACM Vice President John Ottenhoff with questions.