Faculty Resources

Demmler Awards

The Demmler endowment provides funding for faculty members who wish to pursue projects to develop innovation in teaching or in the curriculum. This year, preference will be given to projects that:
– advance innovation in inclusive teaching and/or
– advance the institutional goal of increasing enrollment and/or the College’s national profile as a liberal arts institution.
To provide maximum flexibility, proposals can be submitted at any time through June 2, 2023, for work that could take place any time through the Fall 2023 semester. Proposals will be reviewed by the Provost and Associate Provost with the goal of notifying applicants of the decision on funding within 10 business days of receiving the proposal. You can read the full description of this year’s call here. Applications should be submitted using this form.

Teaching Tools

Looking for a quick way to provide focused feedback to your students? Or perhaps a guided approach for peer review? Check out the TAG Feedback framework. As shown in the image below, the goal of TAG feedback is to give three specific forms of feedback and that’s it!

Too much feedback on an assignment can feel overwhelming, while vague feedback can leave students wondering what they need to do to address it. Using this approach can be a time-saver for faculty, while also providing students with a manageable number of focused, actionable next steps.

URSCA Updates

Summer Research and Scholarship. Allegheny College is now using a common application that all students participating in research, scholarship, and creative activities on campus and in the Meadville community will need to complete. In particular, all students who receive awards through the Office of URSCA or the Office of Community Engaged Learning, as well as students who are funded by grants received by faculty members, are required to complete this form in order to participate in summer programming. Links to program-specific application materials are embedded within the form, including the proposal template for the URSCA Student-Faculty Research Program. The Summer Research Program website is a one-stop shop for all of the information.

Scholars Symposium 2023. Watch for an email from URSCA Director Matt Venesky with information about the 2023 Scholars Symposium, including links to various forms for faculty and department/program chairs to complete (registration for Faculty Mentors wishing to participate in the Mentor Breakfast, links for departments/programs to register seniors participating in the Senior Project Poster Session, etc.). Please be on the lookout for these forms and pay attention to the various due dates that will be approaching as we end the semester.

AI-Writing Resources

Webinar.The GLCA-GLAA Consortium for Teaching and Learning invites you to a conversation on ChatGPT designed to help faculty think about the potential value of these generative AI programs, and not just their potential peril. Among other questions, they will be exploring how we can use AI to help deepen (rather than discourage) learning communities in our classrooms, and the ways that ChatGPT can improve student writing or problem-solving skills. Participants will work in groups with those who have more experience with AI to help everyone brainstorm possible approaches. Please join them for this webinar on Wednesday, March 29 at noon EST. Click here to register.

Using AI to Help Instructors. In their article Using AI to Implement Effective Teaching Strategies in Classrooms: Five Strategies, Including Prompts, the authors describe how instructors can leverage AI to help implement evidence-based teaching methods in their classroom. The five strategies they describe involve: generating multiple examples; generating explanations for different audiences; writing low-stakes tests; assessing student knowledge and identifying areas of confusion; and drawing connections between different course topics. Check out this blog post, written by one of the authors, for a quick overview with examples.

FCR Updates

The Foundation & Corporate Relations (FCR) office invites you to check out the grant opportunity below and to contact them early and often at fcr@allegheny.edu if you’re thinking about applying for a grant.

Humanities Faculty: Community-Engaged Course Development & Voter Education The Project Pericles’ Periclean Faculty Leadership (PFL) Program in the Humanities Grant provides $4,500 grants to design new or significantly revised courses in the humanities that incorporate community-initiated projects and voter education. There are multiple deadlines to apply. If you are interested, please complete the FCR office’s grant proposal endorsement form, indicating which deadline you are interested in.