Funded by the National Institute on Aging (NIA), the Institute on Aging and Social Work played an integral role in the professional development of select faculty members engaged in gerontological research in schools or departments of social work. It offered faculty participants the opportunities to enhance knowledge of research methods, develop a…

Considerable research highlights the value of mentorship to the professional development of early career faculty in academia, yet less research focuses on factors motivating individuals to provide formal guidance to junior colleagues. Given that new social work faculty, in particular, may not receive sufficient mentoring, understanding what…

Physical educators often find it difficult to secure funding for their programs in these tough economic times. However, there is funding out there, if one knows where to look and how to ask for it. This article describes how physical education teachers can make a funding action plan, who to contact, where to write to, and how to get equipment for…

This article describes the Community Grant Writing Project (CGWP), a flexible service-learning framework designed for use in writing-intensive courses. The CGWP incorporates best-practice recommendations from the service-learning literature and addresses recent challenges identified for successful service-learning partnerships. In the CGWP,…

In this paper, four qualitative case studies capture the complex interplay between the social and structural relations that shape community - academic partnerships. Collaborations begin as relationships among people. They are sustained by institutional structures that recognize and support these relationships. Productive collaborations centralize…

University provision for academic development is well established in the USA, UK and many other countries. However, arrangements for its provision and staffing vary. In Australia, there has been a trend towards professional rather than academic staff appointments. Is this appropriate? In this paper, the domains of academic development work are…

Grading can be accelerated to make time for more effective instruction. This article presents specific time management strategies selected to decrease administrative time required of faculty and teaching assistants, including a multiple answer multiple choice interface for exams, a three-tier grading system for open ended problem solving, and a…

Field-based undergraduate geography courses provide numerous pedagogical benefits including an opportunity for students to acquire employable skills in an applied context. This article presents one unique approach to teaching geographic field methods using paleoecological research. The goals of this course are to teach students key geographic…

Over the past decade there has been a dramatic increase in undergraduate research activities at colleges and universities nationwide. However, this comes at a time when budgets are being tightened and some institutions do not have the resources to pursue new initiatives. In this article we present some ideas for obtaining funding and support for…

A growing number of parents--particularly middle- and upper-middle-class parents--are working to fill budgetary gaps through their fundraising, grant writing, and volunteerism in urban public schools. Yet little is known about how this may shape norms and practices related to parental engagement within particular schools. Drawing from a case study…

In this article, Erika Cook and Aaron Becker suggest teachers travel to "unfamiliar" lands to not only breathe life into global lessons but also to gain new perspectives and experiences as educators. For teachers who dread teaching about an unfamiliar place or culture, Cook and Becker recommend considering the very real opportunities to…

Effective dissemination is crucial if innovation and development in teaching and learning in higher education are to lead to sustainable changes in practice. In 2003, King used an agricultural metaphor to challenge innovators to understand the purposes behind their dissemination aims. Similar to the way that seed can be spread, one could choose to…

Grantsmanship is an integral component of surviving and thriving in academic science, especially in the current funding climate. Therefore, any additional opportunities to write, read, and review grants during graduate school may have lasting benefits on one's career. We present here our experience with a small, student-run grant program at…

This article demonstrates how unknowing and/or unintentional commitments to neoliberal ideology adversely impact the advancement of the civic engagement movement. After considering the relevant literature on this topic, I outline how the grant-seeking process can be understood as one organizing technique that affirms structures produced by…

Although the Faculty Learning Community is not a new structure or initiative in the higher education arena, adapting this model for faculty development focused on grant proposal writing is relatively new. This article describes how the concept developed by Milt Cox of Miami University has been successfully modified and implemented twice on the…