Center for Excellence in Learning & Teaching (CELT) Pedagogy Mini-Grants

2023-2024 Contemplative Pedagogy

Marlow Miller, CELT's first Faculty-in-Residence, is leading CELT's 2023-2024 second Contemplative Pedagogy mini-grant cohort of ten faculty members who are studying, practicing and incorporating contemplative pedagogy practices into their courses to support each other and future faculty members who are interested in expanding contemplative pedagogy on campus.

Members of the 2022 Contemplative Pedagogy cohort shared their classroom techniques on how they implement contemplative pedagogy across different disciplines in a talk titled: Contemplative Pedagogy: Strategies for Improving Student Engagement with the UMass Lowell community. Check out this video to learn more!

Contemplative Pedagogy: Strategies for Improving Students' Engagement

2022-2023 Open Education Resources

Brent Shell led CELT's 2022-2023 mini-grant on Open Education Resources (OER). Twenty multi-disciplinary group of faculty were awarded mini grants to creatively develop open education resources to reduce the financial burden on students and expand their access to learning materials. The funds support the work involved in finding, creating, using and sharing OER as replacements for required commercial textbooks.

2021-22 Hybrid Pedagogy

A mini-grant program awarded to faculty who proposed to teach a “hybrid” course in the Fall of 2021 and/or the Spring of 2022 (including labs). Participants collaborated as a cohort to support each other and faculty interested in exploring this teaching mode in the future. A “hybrid” course is one which meets synchronously, alternating on-campus, in-person meetings with virtual meetings during the week, throughout the semester. It is different from a “hy-flex” course in which faculty teach a cohort of students in class and remotely at the same time.

UMass Lowell Faculty have demonstrated significant creativity and success during the pandemic in the integration of technology into their courses, and the University is continuing to support this development as we transition back to in-person courses.