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Guidelines for d’Arbeloff Fund Preliminary Proposals for 2009-2010 Educational Projects" (PDF)

Call for Preliminary Proposals

June 26, 2009

Dear Colleagues:

The Alex and Brit d’Arbeloff Fund for Excellence in Education is soliciting preliminary proposals for ambitious projects to enhance the educational experience of our undergraduates, preferably in the General Institute Requirements (GIRs) or during their first year. Proposal are due in the fall, but I hope that sending out the call and the attached guidelines now might stimulate your creative thinking during quieter moments and might make the application process less onerous later.

This past May, the Institute Faculty voted to approve the implementation before fall 2011 of a new HASS Distribution categorization (one Humanities, one Arts, and one Social Science subject) and also endorsed further piloting of First Year Focus subjects in HASS areas. Such changes will require a substantial amount of faculty time and effort; for this reason, the d’Arbeloff Grants Committee will be especially interested in proposals that contribute to these areas of the GIRs.

In addition, the Committee welcomes other innovations that strengthen our GIRs, including Communication Intensive (CI) subjects. The anticipated removal of the current system of HASS-Ds, which has delineated written and oral communication minimums, will endow CI subjects with even more importance and responsibility in this area.

The GIRs are intended to offer a broad educational background that not only prepares students for more advanced studies in their majors but also expands their knowledge base in preparation for a lifetime of learning. Projects that aspire to provide dynamic, effective teaching, that cross disciplinary boundaries, or that address new curricular areas are all appropriate.

The early semesters of an undergraduate education are crucial in helping students develop a passion for learning that will endure throughout their stay at MIT and, indeed, throughout their lives. Many faculty and students have expressed the opinion that the first-year experience can be improved. At the same time, there has been an impressive amount of dedicated and innovative work undertaken by MIT faculty in recent years, some of which has been described in the Faculty Newsletter and other publications. We can learn much from one another by collaborating in our pedagogy and experimentation. The d’Arbeloff Grant Committee encourages ideas that will help us to do so.

The d’Arbeloff Fund is administered by the Office of Faculty Support under the supervision of the Dean for Undergraduate Education. Information on current and past projects can be found at the fund’s website, http://web.mit.edu/darbeloff.

Completed preliminary proposals—which need be only a few pages—are due by Thursday, October 15, 2009. The d’Arbeloff Grants Committee will review the preliminary proposals; applicants who pass the initial screening process will be invited to submit final proposals by Tuesday, December 1, 2009.

I will send out this information again at the beginning of the new school year but hope that you will soon start thinking about a potential project for a d’Arbeloff grant. Over the past decade this Fund has helped our faculty make numerous and substantial improvements to the quality of education at MIT; please help us continue this important effort.