Grants

Faculty may apply for travel grants to teaching/learning conferences. A call for applications for Fall or Spring grants is issued during the first part of each semester.

Guidlines | Sample Grant 1  | Sample Grant 2 

Teaching Center Faculty Travel Grants

One of the Teaching Center’s goals is to encourage the scholarship of teaching and learning (SoTL) in its various forms and manifestations.  Attending conferences or workshops that are directly related to teaching can enable a faculty member to focus on teaching and learning, and thus to discover what others are doing to improve teaching and enhance student learning.  The Teaching Center provides funds to support faculty members to attend conferences or workshops in which a major focus is on teaching and student learning in higher education or on scholarly material that will be used in teaching at Belmont. We attempt to balance the distribution of funds over the course of the year, among academic disciplines, and between first time applicants and previous recipients.

Guidelines:

  1. An applicant must be a full-time faculty member at Belmont.
  2. The proposal for a travel grant must focus on a faculty member’s experience directly connected to college-level teaching at a conference or workshop.  Given current and potential limitations on travel, online conferences are also eligible for a travel grant. The venue can be a general conference devoted to teaching or SoTL, a specific conference on a particular aspect of teaching (e.g., team-based learning, instructional technology, teaching by the case-study method, problem-based learning, and so on), or a disciplinary conference with a significant portion of its sessions devoted to teaching and learning. If participation in a disciplinary conference is proposed, the applicant should specifically indicate how the content of the conference will inform her or his teaching. The proposal should clearly indicate how participation will benefit Belmont (as opposed to some outside agency). 
  3. Because of budget limitations and the number of requests for support from the Teaching Center, grants will typically be at most $750 per person for an in-person workshop or conference and at most $400 for an online workshop or conference.
  4. An application must describe the conference/workshop, the ways the specific conference/workshop will enrich the applicant’s teaching at Belmont (including linkage to specific courses the applicant teaches), the estimated costs to attend, other potential funding sources, and any other information that would be helpful in the consideration of this request (e.g., a link to a flyer or brochure describing the conference).  If the applicant is presenting at the conference, the application should also include specifics about other elements of the conference that will inform her or his teaching. By itself, presenting at the conference is neither an advantage nor a disadvantage for being awarded a travel grant.
  5. An application should be for a single conference/workshop. To apply for a second conference/workshop, an additional application is required in a separate round of funding. That is, a faculty member may not apply for two separate events in one round of funding.
  6. A grant proposal for the fall semester round of funding should typically be for a conference/workshop in the mid-September to mid-March time period.
  7. Please confer with the Teaching Center Advisory Board (TCAB) member from your college if you have questions or want guidance or feedback prior to submitting an application. If you are submitting your first Teaching Center travel grant proposal, we strongly encourage you to seek input from your college’s TCAB representative.  TCAB members are listed at the bottom of these guidelines.
  8. TCAB members and the Director of the Teaching Center will review travel grant requests and determine grant recipients.  Please send the application electronically to teachingcenter@belmont.edu by the deadline indicated on the application. Nanci Alsup will confirm receipt of the application. Late or incomplete applications will not be considered. Grant recipients will be notified before Fall Break during the fall semester and before Spring Break during the spring semester.


Teaching Center Advisory Board members for the 2022-23 academic year:

  • College of Business – TBA
  • College of Entertainment and Music Business – Sara Wigal
  • College of Health Sciences – TBA
  • College of Law – Krisit Arth
  • College of Liberal Arts and Social Sciences – Joan Li
  • College of Pharmacy – Hope Campbell
  • College of Sciences and Mathematics – Tim Schoenfeld
  • College of Theology and Christian Ministry – Gideon Park
  • College of Music and Performing Arts – Nancy Riley
  • College of Architecture and Design, and College of Art – TBA
  • Assistant Director of the Teaching Center (ex-officio) – Jayme Yeo


Some 2023 Teaching and Learning Workshops and Conferences 

Lilly National and International Conferences on College and University Teaching
  • Oxford, OH: Novermber 11-13, 2023
    Proposal Deadline: TBA
  • San Diego, CA: January 4-6, 2024
    Proposal Deadline: TBA
  • Austin, TX: TBA
    Proposal Deadline: TBA
  • Traverse City , MI: October 11-13, 2023
    Proposal Deadline: TBA
  • Asheville, NC: August 7-9, 2023
    Proposal Deadline: April 30, 2023

National Association for Multicultural Education (NAME) Conference
  • Montgomery, Alabama: November 15-19, 2023
    Proposal Deadline: Closed
 
Reclaiming Liberal Education
  • AAC&U Annual Meeting:  Washington, DC
    January 17-19, 2024
    January 22-24, 2025
    January 21-23, 2026

Gulf South Summit: Building Healthy Communities
  • TBA

The Teaching Professor Conference
  • New Orleans: June 9-11. 2023
    Proposal Deadline: TBA

Christian Scholars’ Conference
  • Houston, TX: June 7-9, 2023
    Proposal Deadline: TBA