Innovations in Education Fund 

The Innovations in Education Fund (IEF) provides support for New School faculty in their work as innovators in the areas of curriculum and pedagogy. Grants of up to $10,000 are awarded on a competitive basis for projects that promote innovative methods of teaching, learning, and/or evaluation.

This year, priority will be given to the following:

  • Proposals that are related to The New School’s Shared Capacities initiative, the university’s approach to undergraduate general education, which focuses on the competencies or skills that students should have developed by the time they graduate. Proposed projects might, for example, creatively foster and promote discipline-specific learning outcomes based on Shared Capacities, especially those that respond to gaps in the university’s curriculum, such as quantitative reasoning and scientific literacy, or develop scalable resources that would supplement or be integrated into existing courses (e.g., online modules, in-person workshops, written materials that complement course assignments, and guidelines for faculty).

Proposals that encourage collaboration among faculty from different schools and facilitate cross-college registration among students. Examples might include team-taught or linked courses, collaborative student projects, and other curricular initiatives that use multiple disciplinary methods and approaches. Proposals of this kind should have the support of all schools involved.

What Does the Fund Support?

The IEF supports faculty in their work as innovators in curriculum and pedagogy at the undergraduate and graduate levels and in online, experiential, and lifelong learning. Funds support collaboration with colleagues and/or students; activities such as research, travel, educational media design, and production; and other projects designed to enrich students' learning experiences. Travel may also be funded if it is a necessary feature of a project and will have a demonstrable benefit for campus-based activities.

Priority is given to praxis-oriented proposals that include one or more of the following features:

  • An active engagement with one or more Shared Capacities; proposed projects might, for example, creatively foster and promote discipline-specific learning outcomes based on Shared Capacities, especially those that respond to gaps in the university's curriculum, or develop scalable resources that would supplement or be integrated into existing courses (e.g., online modules, in-person workshops, written materials that complement course assignments, and guidelines for faculty)

  • Project-based learning that emphasizes real-world engagement

  • Authentic assessment techniques such as performance assessment, electronic learning portfolios, and self-assessment that reflect students' learning, achievement, motivation, and attitudes

  • Collaborative projects that include at least two New School faculty members from different schools and programs

While faculty members are encouraged to apply for any project that fits the criteria described above, consideration will be given primarily to those proposals that suggest a template for long-term adoption by the university.

Many submitted proposals focus on advancing engaged learning and/or public scholarship. Faculty submitting such proposals are also invited to be featured on The New School Collaboratory, which provides a means for faculty to showcase their work and connect with others, at The New School or beyond, who are interested in engaged learning and public scholarship. Eligible projects reflect all or most of the following criteria:

  • Engages external communities and/or institutional partners

  • Creates knowledge that engages and affects broader publics and/or communities

  • Orients toward creating a more just, resilient, and equitable society

  • Advances project-based and experiential pedagogy

  • Connects to or has the potential to connect to thea curriculum and engages students

Projects will be considered for the Collaboratory platform regardless of Innovation in Education Fund (IEF) funding decisions. In order to be featured on the Collaboratory Platform, please complete this form. Eligible faculty will be contacted once the form is received.

If you have any questions or are interested in reviewing project proposals, please contact the Office of Faculty Development at thefacultycenter@newschool.edu.

Testimonials

Mark Larrimore and I received an IEF grant for 2018-19 for "Orienting The New School in History." We requested support for the development of online modules about New School history in anticipation of the institution's centenary in 2019. Mark and I have been exploring, teaching, and researching histories of The New School for ten years, which has resulted in a university lecture class, a website, numerous public presentations, and a series of essays in Public Seminar. What we wanted to accomplish with IEF funding was something that combined these efforts and were directed to a public audience, for ongoing use. Initially we thought this would be in the form of video lectures but instead we chose podcasts for their accessibility and portability. Most of our funds went to employing an audio producer who helped us translate our ideas into podcast form, record interviews, and then edit the final stories. We learned about the importance of good sound recording and how audio storytelling best integrates multiple perspectives. And these podcasts were put into use immediately, not only in our course in Fall 2019 but also in orientation workshops, first-year courses, and on The New School's student-run radio station, WNSR. We are thrilled with the outcome, available here (with accompanying materials)!

- Julia Foulkes, 2018-2019 IEF Grant Recipient

I received a mentoring grant to work with colleagues and mentors at the Public Science Project at the CUNY Graduate Center to develop my understandings of and capacities for doing collaborative research and participatory knowledge-making. Working with María Elena Torre and Michelle Fine, I was able to learn from their experience developing, arguing for, and maintaining participatory research approaches and relationships over the long term. This allowed me to begin to imagine overlaps between Critical Participatory Action Research, a largely social science-based epistemological framework for doing participatory research grounded in the questions of people impacted by it, and Participatory Design, a design- and practice-led research framework and approach that seeks to do the same through design-led inquiry. The mentorship allowed me to continue to develop research practices and political and ethical frameworks for them, through critical feedback and engagement, that remain central to my work.


- Shana Agid, 2019-2020 IEF Grant Recipient

+ Eligibility

Applicant Eligibility

This funding program is open to principal members of the full-time faculty, including those faculty with the following full-time appointments: tenure, tenure track, extended employment, extended employment track, and renewable term appointment. Full-time faculty based in Parsons Paris are also eligible. The fund is also open to part-time faculty members with post-probationary, annual, multi-year, or grandparented status as defined by the ACT-UAW contract and to AFM Local 802 part-time faculty with a minimum of four semesters of classroom appointments. Visiting faculty, faculty in the final year of a fixed-term contract, postdoctoral fellows, and university administrators are ineligible to apply for funding. Applicants may submit only one application to the IEF annually — i.e., applicants may not appear on more than one proposal application.

Project Eligibility

The IEF supports innovative curricular or pedagogical projects. Funds may be used to design and prototype new projects or to assess or implement existing initiatives on a wider scale. The IEF is not intended to support normal activities associated with the development of new courses or syllabi. Proposals for projects that have been funded by the IEF in previous award years are eligible, provided that the proposed project will entail some significant new element.

+ Application Process

The deadline to submit the application for the Innovations in Education Fund is March 1 each year. All materials must be submitted electronically to thefacultycenter@newschool.edu. Receipt of applications will be acknowledged via email. Materials sent after the deadline will not be considered. Awardees will be notified via their New School email by late May 2021. Applicants may only submit one proposal per round. For applications submitted by a team, one team member must be identified as the principal applicant.

Review Process

A university-wide faculty review committee, including past IEF grantees, will review applications submitted by the deadline. Finalists will be contacted by email and, in some cases, be asked to provide additional information about their project. Unsuccessful grant applicants will be notified and may re-apply for the Innovations in Education Fund in the following year.

Project proposals will be reviewed and ranked on the following criteria: scalability, innovation, praxis orientation, and budget specificity and comprehensiveness. Proposals should also be thoughtfully crafted and clearly written. Priority will be given to projects that engage with the university’s Shared Capacities Initiative.

+ Timeline

Application Deadline: March 1 each year Awards announced: Fall semester of award year Earliest start date for funded projects: July 1 of award year Completion date for funded projects: June 30 of award year Awardees may be invited to present on their work in the fall following their award year.

+ Innovations in Education Fund Awards 2019-2020

Community Engagement 101
Evren Uzer, Parsons, and co-applicants Michele Kahane, SPE, and Cynthia Lawson, Parsons; with team member Masoom Moitra, Parsons and SPE. This project will create an introductory curriculum to prepare faculty and graduate students to teach courses that engage with external communities and partners in a thoughtful, socially just way. The modules will introduce issues of power and privilege and frameworks for ethical research and practice, and will include a packet of resources and models for best practices.

Faculty and Staff Learning Community
Shana Agid, Parsons, and co-applicant Laura Liu, Lang; with team members Ujju Aggarwal, SPE, Greg Climer, Parsons, Antonia Craig, Parsons, Fatuma Dahir, Parsons, Rachel Francois, Parsons, and Carrie E. Neal, Parsons. This project builds on the structures, content, and process of a pilot Parsons First Year learning community that was supported by a partial IEF grant. Previously restricted to Parsons and with an emphasis on faculty, the new learning community reaches across colleges to consider different faculty expertise and student bodies, and explicitly includes staff in ‘critical conversation and mutual learning to better support student experiences in the classroom with regard to universal classroom design, inclusion, collective responsibility, examining the exploitation of asymmetrical power relationships, and social justice’. The goal is to directly impact student learning through faculty support and development.

Intimacy in Performance Practice
Glynis Rigsby, CoPA and co-applicant Chaelon Costello, CoPA; with team members Jennifer Holmes, CoPA, Tanya Kalmonovitch, CoPA, and Octavia Driscoll, CoPA. This project continues an initiative begun in the School of Drama to achieve 'cultural transformation by retooling professional and academic practice related to consent culture and sexual content in rehearsal and classroom settings.' Students will learn how to communicate in 'complex interpersonal dynamics involving power, gender, and sexuality' through the development of workshops and policies. The goal is to help students 'emerge as conscious community members entering professional practice with capacities that enact safe, healthy and empowered rehearsal and production environments.'

The Language Support Initiative
Caitlin Morgan, SPE; with team members Jacqueline Smith, SPE, Theresa Breland, SPE, Bryan Melillo, Parsons, and Adrienne Reynolds, Parsons.The Language Support Initiative is a faculty development model consisting of two main components: 1) a set of flexible training options and 2) a community of faculty and administrators at The New School, the Language Support Collective. This capacity-building initiative is dedicated to promoting Teaching English to Speakers of Other Languages (TESOL) best practices and pedagogies, with the ultimate goal of supporting the academic experience of non-native English speakers and creating the most effective learning environment for all learners in New School classes. The IEF award will allow for the expansion and development of resources, materials, and forums that sustain this faculty learning community, including a set of online training modules.

+ Innovations in Education Fund Awards 2018-2019

The Language Support Initiative
Caitlin Morgan, SPE, with team members Jacqueline Smith, SPE; Alex Bennett, Open Campus; Theresa Breland, SPE; Bryan Melillo, Parsons; and Adrienne Reynolds, Parsons. This project is a collaboration between the English as a Second Language (ESL) program and Parsons, designed as a faculty development model aimed at improving support for international non-native-English-speaking students. The IEF award will allow for the expansion and development of a set of resources, materials, and forums that support the faculty learning community.

Orienting The New School in History
Mark Larrimore, Lang, with Julia Foulkes, SPE. This project builds on Professors Larrimore and Foulkes's ULEC History of The New School and their significant archival work. This project mobilizes the university's rich and complicated histories to deepen understanding of the distinctive legacies for our communities. The IEF award will support the creation of five complementary online modules featuring recorded lectures/discussions, accompanying readings and materials, and a facilitated online discussion board.

Post-Genre Instrument Design
Edward Keller, Parsons, with Tanya Kalmanovitch, CoPA, and with William McHale, Parsons, to support. An expansion of an ongoing collaboration between Mannes and Parsons' Center for Transformative Media, the Post-Genre Instrument Design project is aimed at emerging new musicians seeking a community in which performers, instrument designers, inventors, activists, entrepreneurs, and software engineers all begin to overlap. The project proposes to build a foundational transdisciplinary curriculum from which new certificates or degrees exploring post-genre instruments and music/sound studies research might emerge involving Parsons and CoPA.

Parsons First Year Faculty Learning Community
Shana Agid, Parsons, and Greg Climer, Parsons, with team members Antonia Craig, Parsons; Fatuma Dahir; Parsons, Rachel Francois, Parsons; and Carrie E. Neal, Parsons. This project will create a faculty learning community in which faculty explore types of pedagogy design and delivery and philosophies of teaching and learning, consider collective responsibility, examine asymmetrical power relationships, and explore social justice from subjective and systemic perspectives. Over the course of the year, participants will attend workshops, co-facilitate roundtable discussions, and develop protocols for assessing the efficacy of practices and pedagogies.

An Exploration of Black Geographies Across Time and Space
Mia White, SPE. This project will build on work conducted during Professor White's GIDEST fellowship. This collaborative project envisions utilizing immersive storytelling to communicate key ideas in Black geographical thought by introducing a multidisciplinary approach to understanding concepts of history, race, and space. A team of students will research and assess historical Black texts and materials through a review of existing bibliographies, from which they will develop a curated collection for contemporary audiences. They will also work with leading animators to produce new educational materials on Black geographies.