Overview
Are you looking to highlight innovative teaching practices from your classroom and share them with the Colorado School of Mines community? Our Faculty Spotlight mini-grant provides a unique opportunity for faculty members to showcase impactful techniques or projects from their courses. Grant recipients receive $3,000 (via PD or RD funds) and collaborate with a Trefny Faculty Developer in bi-weekly meetings over the summer to develop an original, shareable teaching and learning resource. Recipients also receive personalized support to refine and articulate their approach to teaching, as well as the opportunity to generate original material that can be used for future conference presentations or publications. Faculty Spotlight grant recipients will also share their resource with their peers at one teaching and learning venue (learning community, luncheon, workshop, panel, etc.) during the following academic year. The content and format of Faculty Spotlight resources are flexible, but typically include a combination of written or video reflections, step-by-step guides, student perspectives, evaluative data, sharing of course materials and examples, and so forth.
Mini-grant recipients…
Co-create a unique multimodal resource that strengthens the culture of teaching and learning at Mines by sharing your experiences, practices, examples, and other course materials. We are open to a variety of project types and deliverables, so please do not feel limited by this format in your application.
Meet bi-weekly with a Trefny Faculty Developer (on campus or via Zoom) to develop your Faculty Spotlight project.
Develop original arguments about your teaching practice that can serve as a starting point for future conference presentations or journal publications.
Work asynchronously in advance of each meeting to move the project forward. Tasks might include revising based on feedback, gathering course materials, drafting text, reading education literature where appropriate, reaching out to students to gather examples or solicit feedback, and so forth.
Incorporate feedback to refine your own approaches to and articulations of teaching and learning.
Facilitate a brief presentation that introduces and shares your Faculty Spotlight project with your peers at a face-to-face Trefny learning opportunity (to be completed during the academic year following your grant).
Past Projects
Project Title: Strategies for Meaningful Classroom Engagement
“Through this experience, I was able to dig into my own approach to teaching… and learn about the education research going on and tie what I was doing in my class to those topics. It also helped me design new evaluation resources and surveys for my class for the next time I teach it so that I can continue getting feedback on my approaches… I think that we all have really interesting approaches to teaching, and the more that we share those through these faculty spotlights, the more we can help each other to become better instructors.”
Ryan Venturelli, Assistant Professor, Geology and Geological Engineering
Project Title: Grading with Mastery-Based Testing at Mines
“The Faculty Spotlight really helped me solidify the story of what was happening in my classes. I really liked being able to create a web resource that communicates what I’m doing to other faculty. It meant I had to communicate [my approaches] and that ended up helping with multiple publications…I’ve had multiple people reach out to me because they’ve seen the resource and wanted to ask me questions about the system or find out more.”
Becky Swanson, Teaching Professor, Applied Mathematics & Statistics
Aram Bingham, Teaching Postdoctoral Fellow, Applied Mathematics & Statistics
Project Title: Using Screencast Explanations to Enhance Learning and Assessment
“I think my spotlight experience helped me at least as much as it might help others. [Trefny] really helped me organize and distill different pedagogical approaches I had tried and focus in on the one or two most positively impactful ones for students. The experience has positively influenced my current course designs and has also connected me with other faculty interested in doing similar things and from whom I’ve gotten additional new ideas.”
Tracy Gardner, Teaching Professor, Chemical & Biological Engineering
Additional Details
All full-time academic faculty at Mines who have not yet received a Faculty Spotlight mini-grant are eligible to apply. Mini-grant recipients receive $3000 to support their project work time. Grants are limited to one per academic year. Applications are due Monday, March 31, 2025. If you have additional questions about the mini-grant, please reach out to facdev@mines.edu.