CALL FOR PROPOSALS (2025-2026)
Applications are due at 5:00 PM CST on Monday, May 12, 2025.
Contact Kaitlyn Farrell Rodriguez if you would like to chat about the Collaborative Learning Communities (CLC) Grant.
The Collaborative Learning Community (CLC) Grant is open to all instructors (graduate student and postdoctoral instructors, lecturers, tenure-track, clinical, tenured), interested in collaborating with undergraduate or graduate students, co-instructors, inter- or intra-departmental colleagues or members of the Austin community to better enhance engagement, wellness, resilience, and belonging in the different learning spaces they co-create.
This grant is designed to support new learning communities dedicated to identifying and disrupting barriers to engagement and wellness within classrooms, clinics, studios, or labs. Funds of up to $2,500 will be awarded for projects that assemble small groups of instructors and students to discuss and learn together about strategies they can implement in learning spaces to enhance engagement, wellness, resilience, and belonging. Funds can support activities scheduled any time during Fall 2025 and/or Spring 2026 semester.
Preference will be given to proposals that meaningfully incorporate student perspectives in proposed learning communities. This may include centering student voices through co-facilitation practices, active mentorship opportunities, or the co-generation of resources to share more broadly with the UT-Austin teaching and learning community.
Collaborative learning communities will gather a minimum of three times. The consultants at the Center for Teaching and Learning (CTL) will also interview each member of the learning communities after the collaborative learning community has concluded these initial gatherings to collect key insights, resources, and best practices from the groups to inform instructor development efforts around engagement and belonging with broader Austin teaching and learning communities.
This year, we are particularly interested in applicants who look to collaboratively explore methods of promoting instructor and student engagement, wellness, resilience, and belonging in ways that fully represent the breadth of experience and expertise present within the University of Texas at Austin community.
How do I apply? What is required for the application?
You can apply through our submission form. To help you get ready, here is the information we are requesting. Applications should address all five of the following areas:
1. Description of Proposed Collaborative Learning Community (CLC)
- Who is or will be in your group? Do they come from the same department, or is this a multi-disciplinary community? What brings this group together (e.g., common experiences as instructors or learners; teaching positions; or interests)?
- How will student perspectives and voices play a role in the design and facilitation of the collaborative learning community?
- How will you recruit members and motivate them to consistently participate?
- How often will you meet?
- What is your proposed timeline within or across Fall 2025 and/or Spring 2026?
2. Community Plan
What is your plan for gatherings and ways of motivating members to participate?
For example, will you focus on case study discussion and strategizing, syllabus exchange, peer classroom observations and feedback, discussion of readings about topics of engagement, belonging, wellness, and resiliency, etc.? Something else?
3. Budget
How do you intend to spend the grant funds?
For example, will you prioritize stipends for members of guest speakers, book purchases, tickets/transportation money for an experience that would inform instructor and student conversations about topics of engagement, belonging, wellness, and resiliency etc.? Something else?
4. Outcomes and impacts
What do you want to achieve with this project?
For example, is your goal to: increase understanding of and share best practices for promoting engagement, belonging, wellness, and resiliency? To raise campus awareness about student concerns/challenges around existing barriers to learning? To create resources or curriculum revision plans for UT instructors invested in instructor self-care and care of students? Something else?
5. Dissemination plans
What will the collaborative learning community produce that you can share beyond members’ insights?
For example, will your community design a workshop modeling and providing practice opportunities for enhancing engagement, belonging, wellness, or resiliency? Will you create a series of blog posts or sets of brief video(s) for the CTL website to disseminate your findings? Will you draft an article or conference proposal and report out your discoveries at department faculty meetings? What other applications of your future work as a collaborative learning community can you imagine?
Who will be able to apply?
Any UT Austin instructor (graduate student or postdoctoral instructors, lecturers, tenure-track, clinical, tenured) may apply.
How will the proposals be evaluated?
This is an open call where submissions will be evaluated by a team consisting of CTL staff and faculty. Funds will be awarded to proposals that most clearly demonstrate:
- Clear focus on campus climate and topics of engagement, belonging, wellness and/or resilience in different types of co-created learning spaces
- Substantive rationale for how the proposed activities will directly enhance engagement, belonging, wellness and/or resilience in UT-Austin learning spaces
- Likelihood of success in recruiting and retaining participants
- Potential for impact on campus beyond the collaborative learning community’s participants
Clear connection between the budget and the proposed project
Effort to include the voices of students or community members in design or facilitation of the learning community
What is the schedule for submission?
Applications must be submitted for review by 5:00 PM CST on Monday, May 12, 2025.
How can I give back to my UT colleagues?
At the conclusion of this year’s grants, CTL will hold an informal showcase to celebrate the work done across the grant categories, discuss outcomes, and reflect on the learning community experience. More information about this showcase or a similar opportunity is forthcoming.
Financial Stipulations
Funds will be transferred to grantees’ departments. Funding requests should be consistent with relevant departmental, college, or University policy, Regents’ rules, and Texas state law.
If I have further questions, whom do I contact?
Contact Kaitlyn Farrell Rodriguez if you would like to chat about the Collaborative Learning Communities (CLC) Grant.
2024-2025 Grantees
Rasha Diab, Associate Professor
Megan Poole, Assistant Professor
Autumn Reyes, PhD Student
Jade Shiva Edward, PhD Student
Paige Welsh, PhD Student
Department of Rhetoric
Care(ful) Grading: “How and to what extent and end(s) do we grade?”
Erica "EG" Gionfriddo
Department of Theater and Dance
Syllabus Blow-Up Parties
This learning community, centered on Assistant Instructors, TA's and education majors, will host a series of parties to reimagine the syllabus document as a tool for belonging. Syllabus Blow-Up Parties are collaborative strategy sessions to interrogate and experiment with syllabus language and policies to cultivate a strong classroom culture of accountability and care. Parties will, of course, include food and at times align with Provost Teaching Fellows investing in the same strategies.
Marialena Rivera, Assistant Professor of Instruction
Stan Richards School of Advertising & Public Relations; Moody College of Communication Office of Undergraduate Education