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As individuals or as part of campus teams, TGQF Faculty Fellows should expect a transformative experience that will allow them to redesign a class they teach, engaging their students with discussion-based study of texts, works, and ideas. This includes participation in two funded in-person convenings, access to resources to develop their classes and to produce a student-oriented event, and opportunities to apply for institutional transformation grants to further develop liberal learning at their institutions. Each, individual fellow will receive a $5,000 stipend, paid in four disbursements throughout the fellowship experience.
The fellowship begins with an in-person convening in Austin, Texas in December. TGQF will fly each fellow to Austin on Thursday, Dec 12th in time to attend a featured speaker, followed by a day-long workshop on Friday, December 13th held at Austin Community College where they engage with invited speakers, collaborate with other teams, and reflect on their own teaching and leadership. This convening will inspire Fellows to think creatively about how they can deepen opportunities for liberal learning on their campuses and to understand how their work is a part of a national movement to transform the general education experience at community colleges. We will provide lodging for both evenings of the 12th and the 13th and travel costs, as well as provide meals during the convening and a special dinner on the evening of the 13th.
Stipend Disbursement: Each Fellow will receive their first disbursement of $1,000 of their fellowship stipend in December 2024, soon after participating in the opening convening.
Between December 2024 and early June 2025, Fellows will be working in campus teams on their individual course redesign projects meeting monthly with the entire group on Zoom. During these sessions, Fellows will explore discussion-based pedagogy, attend presentations from community college faculty leaders involved in successful humanities programs, review exemplary curricular and co-curricular materials, and receive peer feedback on campus initiatives and course redesign ideas. The Fellowship directors will schedule one-on-one time with Fellows and campus teams to provide feedback on course redesign and to learn more about their institutional contexts, during which they will explore how new and robust liberal education initiatives might begin and thrive at Fellows’ home institutions. Fellowship campus teams will design and run at least one humanities-focused event involving students and faculty at their institution or in the community that their institution serves. TGQF will provide financial support for these events, which may look like covering food purchases, paying for materials or other costs associated with the event.
Fellowship campus teams will design and run at least one humanities-focused event involving students and faculty at their institution or in the community that their institution serves. TGQF will provide financial support for these events, which may look like covering food purchases, paying for materials or other costs associated with the event.
During this time, each fellow will redesign a frequently taught course that meets general education requirements for a large number of students in academic programs at their institution. This redesign will center that course on the discussion-based study of transformative texts, works, or ideas, accounting for about 1/3rd of a semester’s or quarter’s curriculum. Fellows will also plan and hold at least one humanities event (planned jointly by teams) at their institution with the support of TGQF.
As part of their participation in the TGQF Faculty Fellows Program, faculty teams will be invited to apply for institutional development grants for $10,000 to $40,000 to fund projects in the following year that develop liberal learning in the humanities at their institutions. TGQF will introduce the grant application process to fellows during the monthly meetings and support fellows through the grant application process to develop competitive projects. Proposals will be due by late June 2025, and grantees will be announced in July 2025. Projects will be completed during the 2025/2026 academic year.
Faculty teams will be invited to apply for institutional development grants for $10,000 to $40,000 to fund projects in the following year that develop liberal learning in the humanities at their institutions.
The formal work of the first phase of each fellowship will conclude with a two day, in-person closing workshop, to be held on the campus of a fellowship campus team on Thursday, June 5th and Friday, June 6th. Please let us know in your application if you would like for us to consider your campus as potential location for this event. During this workshop, Fellows will work to create a public resource, held and managed by TGQF, that will serve as a guide to other community colleges and individuals interested in developing discussion-based paths through general education programs and courses at their institutions. Each group of Fellows will collectively determine what resource will be of most value and use the concluding workshop to design it. TGQF will provide travel and lodging for Fellows, as well as meals during the workshop and a special dinner on the evening of June 6.
Stipend Disbursement: Fellows will receive their second disbursement of $2,000 of their fellowship stipend in June 2025, soon after participating in the in-person closing workshop.
Fellows will be expected to teach their redesigned courses at least twice in the 2025/2026 academic year. They will be asked to administer a beginning and end of semester survey to their students about their experience of the course, and will complete their own faculty survey regarding their own experience of the course and plans for developing and scaling.
Stipend Disbursement: Fellows will receive their third disbursement of $1,000 of their fellowship stipend after they have completed and submitted the surveys for their first teaching of the course.
During the 2025/2026 academic year, fellows will also meet with their campus teams to review the effectiveness of their courses, administer their institutional development grants (if received), and work on gathering available institutional data to use alongside survey data from their course surveys to assess the effectiveness of their programs. Teams will submit a final impact report to The Great Questions Foundations at the end of the 2025/2026 academic year.
Stipend Disbursement: Fellows will receive their fourth and final disbursement of $1,000 of their fellowship stipend after they have completed their team report.
Application Deadline: October 15th, 2024
Although we strongly encourage faculty to apply as teams of 3 – 4 faculty from their home institutions, and team-based applications will be most competitive, we encourage faculty who are unable to develop a team to submit individual applications. Individual fellows will be placed on a team with other individual fellows for work as a cohort.
The Great Questions Foundation seeks to promote liberal education and core-text and discussion-based learning at the community college through supporting faculty development and course redesign and helping to establish and support core-text programs and courses.
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