Summer Stipends for Curricular Innovation (Summer 2024)

The following is an opportunity for Humanities graduate faculty stemming from our Andrew W. Mellon Foundation grant, Humanities Engage: Re-Imagining Doctoral Education in the Dietrich School of Arts and Sciences. Committed to reimagining doctoral training as we prepare tomorrow’s versatile Humanists, we support graduate faculty who will lead on designing and implementing curricular innovation that will help propel doctoral students toward impactful careers across all sectors.

Humanities Graduate Faculty:  Summer Stipends for Curricular Innovation (Summer 2024)

Summer stipends of $6,000 are available for DSAS Humanities graduate faculty who will commit two months in Summer 2024 to designing a new graduate course with significant public and/or digital humanities scholarship components. Preference will be given to proposals that foreground collaboration, communication to non-specialist audiences, and non-traditional writing assignments (public-facing genres, blogs, op-eds) and that have strong engagement plans geared to recruiting students from across multiple disciplines. Courses might, e.g., focus on teaching graduate students how to develop and put into practice their own public scholarship projects or provide students with team-based, hands-on instruction in scholarly digital publishing.

For faculty reflections on the curricular design experience and their syllabi, please see the Faculty Summer Stipends for Curricular Innovation page of the Humanities Engage website.

Restrictions

Applicants must not be employed in any way in the summer term for which they are applying. Faculty members who have contractual obligations, including monies advanced for writing, or those engaged in traditionally compensated Third Term teaching or administrative assignments, or holding other University or sponsored research summer salary support, are not eligible. Faculty may not hold a Summer Stipend for Curricular Innovation and a Summer Term Research Stipend for Untenured Faculty in the same summer.

Applicants should submit the following materials, in this order, in a single .pdf attached to an email to HEngage@pitt.edu by April 1, 2024:

  • Outline of the proposed course: please explain how it addresses core tenets of the curricular change agenda of Humanities Engage, detail target audience and engagement plan, proposed public humanities and/or digital humanities content and methods, Intended Learning Outcomes, and prospective assignments; detail the work plan for two summer months (incl. any site visits or pedagogy workshops, virtual or in-person depending on public health guidance and university posture and in conformity with University standards and guidelines, etc.) (2 pages max.)
  • Bibliography (1 page)
  • CV (2 pages max.)
  • Chair’s letter of endorsement, explaining how the proposed course advances the Ph.D. program’s mission and committing to enabling the instructor to offer the course in the near term

Criteria

  • Innovative potential in the context of the portfolio of courses within the instructor’s department and DSAS Humanities Ph.D. programs at large
  • Appeal to Humanities Ph.D. students across disciplines; strength of engagement plans
  • Innovation in teaching methods
  • Feasibility of developing the course in the time available
  • Appropriate methods to document and assess project impact
  • Departmental commitment to enabling the instructor to offer the course in the near term

Recipients will be expected to share the syllabus with the Steering Committee by September 1, 2024 and to post by the same date a blog post reflecting on their curricular design experience on the Humanities Engage website. Syllabi will be featured on the website.

Proposals will be evaluated by a committee composed of members of the Steering Committee and additional Humanities Chairs.