INTRODUCTION
Teaching innovation grants are designed to give full time instructors time over the summer to develop something new in a course to be taught in Fall 2026. If selected, the grantee will be awarded $3,000 to work on their innovation over the summer semester, and implement the innovation in their course taught in Fall 2026. Innovations that can be utilized by other instructors are especially welcomed.
For the 2026-2027 academic year, the focus will be on fostering disciplinary thinking (CTL Effective Teaching Principle #5). Disciplinary thinking is the ability to think, reason, and solve problems like an expert in a specific field, using that discipline's unique methods, concepts, and frameworks, rather than just memorizing facts. It involves adopting specialized "habits of mind," such as a historian's focus on evidence and causation, a mathematician's use of axioms, or a scientist's experimental logic, to deeply understand and engage with complex information.
Disciplinary thinking transforms students from passive learners into active participants who can "think like" a mathematician, scientist, historian, nurse,or any other expert in their chosen field, leading to deeper understanding and more relevant problem-solving.
Grantees will develop activities, assignments and/or projects so that students understand and see themselves in the discipline and solve disciplinary problems that do not necessarily have “right” answers or have multiple answers.
This grant calls for you to design resources or intentional experiences new to your class. Grantees will be expected to:
- Work over the summer on researching and developing resources that promote disciplinary thinking
- Provide an end of summer report and examples of the resources
- Teach using the resources in the Fall 2026 semester
- Reflect on the resources, how well they worked and plans for improvement
- Share results in a presentation to the UT Austin community in the Spring 2027 semester.
HOW TO APPLY
Any full time UT instructor, individually or in teams, may submit a proposal. Applications must be submitted for review by midnight on Sunday, March 22nd.
Access 2026-2027 the application here.
Congratulations 2025-2026 Grantees!
Oeyvind Bjoeru
Germanic Studies
Language Pods: Shared Interests to Foster Language Learning
Lyn Hoare
Theater and Dance
Theatre for Dialogue: Exploring Meaningful Social Connection
Mina Kim
Asian Studies
Living Museums: Fostering Belonging and Artistic Engagement in Korean Education
Li-Chen Lin
Nursing
Promoting Professional Belonging Through Integrating Growth Mindset in Nursing Skills Development
Bindu Viswanathan
Statistics and Data Science
Boosting Engagement and Belonging with Collaborative Probability and Statistics
Veronica Walker
Nursing
Fostering Belonging and Caring Through Individualized Student Interviews
Sara Simons
Theater and Dance
Fighting Imposter Syndrome Among Preservice Teachers
Andrei Straumanis
Chemistry and Biochemistry
Fostering Connection in Large STEM Courses via Peer Plus a Year Mindset