Elkins Professorship for Academic Transformation
The Elkins Professorship for Academic Transformation is awarded competitively to a faculty member in the University System of Maryland to support a project that can foster or illuminate improvements in access, quality of outcomes, and/or stewardship of people's time, money, and other scarce resources. Work on "academic transformation" advances at least two of those three goals.
The Fellowship award of $40,000 is for work to be carried out over one semester of full-time work or two semesters of half-time work, likely as part of an academic leave/sabbatical. If the institution matches the award, the project could be extended to a year of full-time work. The awardee's activities would be carried out in collaboration with the staff of the William E. Kirwan Center for Academic Innovation.
The proposed work should advance and illuminate some aspect of academic transformation, directly or indirectly. More often than not, proposals will expand on inquiry or initiatives already underway. Proposals would typically outline some combination of study of existing research and evidence, new research, development, and/or action toward the solution of an educational need or challenge such as:
- The need to educate students who differ substantially, for example in their perspectives, sense of themselves as learners, motives for learning, preparation, and abilities;
- The need to demonstrate to potential students, taxpayers, employers, benefactors and others that our graduates have been well-prepared and even transformed by their experiences in our institutions;
- The need to make more productive use of information about students and learning to guide and improve instruction and advising;
- The need to expand, extend and sustain practices that have demonstrated their value and potential on a smaller scale.
- The need for education to continually improve in its methods, content, and resources rather than treating change as an exception to normal practice;
- The need for more inclusive, useful strategies for helping large numbers of faculty gradually expand their repertoire of teaching strategies.
These are only examples. The funded work might focus directly on teaching and learning or on conditions, policies, and infrastructure that influence teaching and learning. Please follow the link below for more information.