One of the purposes of the Teaching Center is to encourage the scholarship of teaching. Attending conferences related to teaching can enable a faculty member to focus on teaching and learn what others are doing to improve teaching and enhance student learning. The Teaching Center provides funds for faculty members to attend conferences in which a major focus is on teaching in higher education. The attempt will be made to balance the distribution of funds over the course of the year, among disciplines, and between first time applicants and previous recipients.

Guidelines:

1. Applicants must be full time faculty members at Belmont.

2. The conference must focus on college-level teaching. It can be a general conference devoted to teaching, a specific conference on a particular aspect of teaching (e.g., collaborative learning, instructional technology, teaching by the case-study method), or a disciplinary conference with a significant portion of its sessions devoted to teaching. If travel to a disciplinary conference is proposed, applicants should indicate how the content of the conference will impact their teaching.

3. The Center will provide grants up to $500 for a workshop or conference and up to $1000 for a longer institute.

4. Applicants must submit a request describing the conference, the ways this conference will enrich the applicant's teaching at Belmont, the estimated costs to attend the conference, and any other information the applicant thinks will be helpful in the consideration of this request (e.g., a copy of the flyer or brochure describing the conference).

5. The Director of the Teaching Center and the members of the Advisory Board will review and approve travel grant requests. For Spring 2007 grants, One paper and one electronic copy of each application must be received in the Teaching Center by TBA.  Late or incomplete applications will not be considered.

6. The recipient will be expected to submit to the Teaching Center a short (1-2 page) overview of the conference describing the highlights of the conference for the participant. The applicant may be asked to share observations about the conference with other Belmont faculty members through an article in the newsletter or in a luncheon discussion group.

Click here to download the Faculty Travel Grant Application (PDF).
Click here to view examples of previous Travel Grants (PDF).