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Home > Faculty : Course Incubators

Course Incubators

Questions concerning the Course Incubators pilot should be directed to the Nanette Hanks, Assistant Dean for Curriculum.

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Creating CLA Courses for the 21st Century:
Course Incubators: Request for applications

What are course incubators?

The College is seeking applications from CLA tenured/tenure track faculty members for the Course Incubators program. Course Incubator are creatively designed courses that may be outside of the traditional disciplinary structures and that make connections—between academic fields, with the Twin Cities community and beyond, among faculty and students, and between what we do and teach with what students and the people of Minnesota need. The Course Incubators program provides space for undergraduate course development and pedagogical innovation in a format where flexible constellations of faculty members can teach novel courses that do not fit in standard departmental/disciplinary requirements or frameworks.

The goal of the Course Incubators is to develop exciting new courses and/or to generate new ways of teaching and learning that bridge multiple disciplines or communities and support the notion of liberal arts as a coherent whole. These courses likely will vary in content and form and in whether they are cross-disciplinary or within one discipline, but the critical element is that the courses showcase the strength and importance of a liberal arts education and use new frameworks or themes or cutting-edge teaching methodologies or formats. Courses may also involve students actively in research or creative work that leads them to grapple with liberal arts themes and pedagogies.

How does the Course Incubators program work?

• CLA will support up to four three-credit incubator classes at the 3xxx level in spring semester 2013. The courses will be offered under the CLA designator and may be cross-listed with courses in the instructor’s home unit.
• Each course will be capped at 25 students if taught by a sole instructor; and capped at 45 students if the course is co-taught by two instructors. In capping the course size, no TA support will be provided. CLA-OIT will be available to assist with any technology faculty may want to incorporate in the courses, including moodle, wiki/blog sites, etc.
• These courses will count as part of a faculty member’s regular teaching assignment; departments may request TINs (Temporary Instructional Needs) funding if needed.
• Tenured/tenure track faculty members may propose incubator courses. The department chair’s or director’s approval will be required for a faculty member to propose such a course. For courses co-taught by two faculty members from different units, approval from both unit heads will be needed.

Proposals - Due Friday, March 30, 2012

Interested faculty members should submit a brief proposal to Assistant Dean Nanette Hanks (nhanks@umn.edu) in the Office of Undergraduate Programs no later than Friday, March 30, 2012. The proposal should be no longer than 2 pages and include:

• Faculty contact information
• Course title and description
• A description of how the course will highlight the liberal arts
• An explanation of the distinctive framework of teaching and learning methods
• Space or potential technology requirements
• Approval from unit chair(s)

The four courses will be selected by Associate Dean for Faculty Michal Kobialka, Associate Dean for Undergraduate Programs Jennifer Windsor, and Assistant Dean for Curriculum Nanette Hanks. Decisions about the selected courses will be communicated by April 15, 2012.