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Faculty Fellowships

Faculty Fellowships

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Deadline for 2025-2028: October 9, 2024, at 6 PM ET

If you would like to see an example of a successful proposal, please click here.

Purpose: The Faculty Fellowship program is designed to stimulate and facilitate projects by faculty members to improve their teaching, to advance their scholarly and creative work, to enhance the University's academic programs, and to realize institutional goals.

Eligibility: Any tenured faculty member is eligible to apply.  In general, untenured faculty members are not eligible for Faculty Fellowships, except if the initial appointment is at the rank of Associate Professor and the faculty member has completed a satisfactory interim review or if the tenure decision has been so accelerated that the faculty member is not eligible for a pre-tenure leave. A faculty member may receive a Faculty Fellowship more than once during his or her career; however, there must be a minimum of one year between the awards.

During a Faculty Fellowship faculty members may not apply for a Fisher Fellowship or a Fisher Course Reassignment. For complete details about overlapping Faculty Development awards and other University recognitions, please see the table under "Faculty Categories and Eligibility for Funding."

Expectations & Rules:

  • Each fellowship will normally extend for a three-year term. For some projects, a two-year term may be more suitable. If you would like to apply only for a two-year award, please note this preference on your application. 
  • A Faculty Fellow will be eligible for support from the Conference, Workshop, and Professional Development Fund; they may also apply for both SRF and Student-Faculty Summer Research Programs on projects related or unrelated to their fellowship.
    • a salary supplement of $5,000 each year which is not added to the base pay;
    • a reduction in the teaching load, equivalent to four out of the twenty-four contact hours in an academic year to reassign the time to the project (10-12 hours per week for a whole semester);
    • a project development budget with a maximum of $2,000 each year.
  • If faculty members are requesting funding for multiple projects (for example, both a faculty fellowship and a sabbatical), they should include a statement with each proposal explaining the relationship between the projects. The projects may be related but each project should have a distinct product.
  • The specific details of each arrangement for the reassigned time will be developed by the faculty member in consultation with the department chair and the Vice President for Academic Affairs.
  • Recipients of Faculty Fellowships must also continue to fulfill normal expectations of teaching effectiveness, professional activity and professional growth, and departmental and University service during the three-year term (or two-year) as determined by the Vice President for Academic Affairs.
  • Faculty members might receive these awards many times during their careers, but a recipient will be eligible to hold a new award only after one year has elapsed since the previous award. Holders of a Faculty Fellowship may not apply for a Fisher Fellowship or a Fisher Course Reassignment since the Faculty Fellowship has commitments of time and product that must be completed without delay.
  • Faculty members considering projects that involve technology should consult Faculty Instructional Technology Support (FITS) at least two weeks prior to the application deadline.

Types of Faculty Fellowships:

There are four areas for which an individual may apply:

  • Teaching/curricular development projects: Proposals in this area might include projects such as the development and teaching of a new area of expertise in the applicant's discipline, which might be shared with colleagues; several changes in courses, involving the addition of effective technology in courses at several levels; developing or reworking courses to incorporate new perspectives and concepts; development of new pedagogical methods, which might be incorporated into several classes and shared with colleagues.

  • Scholarly/creative projects: The projects in this area might include substantive work on a manuscript or major new research; they could include projects in the creative areas as well, such as sustained work on performances or exhibitions. Some examples here include working on a book-length manuscript, a major research project or performance, or preparing an entire new body of artwork for a one-person exhibition.

  • Service projects: Projects involving a substantive idea that would improve an existing program, create something new at DePauw, and/or provide a needed complement to support faculty work. Fellowships will not be granted for routine service. Proposals must include a practical plan.

  • Combination projects: Proposals combining any of the three other types may be submitted.  It should be clear in the proposal how the types are integrated for the project.

Criteria for Evaluation:

  1. Completeness and Clarity of the Application: The application should include defined goals and should be written in language understandable to your colleagues on the Faculty Development Committee. It should be detailed and contain a full explanation of the applicant's process and product.

  2. Scope of the Project: The breadth of the project should be comparable to that of a one-semester sabbatical (or two-thirds of such a project, in the case of a two-year fellowship); this is a major grant and the resultant project should be worthy of the time and financial investment. The fellow should expect to spend 10-12 hours per week on this project in each semester in which the reassigned time has been granted. This time should be guarded carefully in order to guarantee real progress. There is no expectation that summer time will be expended on this project, but the fellows may work on their projects in the summer if they choose. In contrast to the larger scope of Faculty Fellowships, summer stipends and Fisher Course Reassignments are generally appropriate to support work on an article or a paper for a professional meeting; similarly, these more limited grants are appropriate for preparation of artwork for a group exhibition. Designing one course would not normally be considered as an adequate project for a Faculty Fellowship. The length of the fellowship period requested (two or three years) shall not be among the criteria for evaluation, and priority will not be given to two-year or three-year fellowships, as long as the scope of work proposed is appropriate for the time requested. 

  3. Merit of the Project: Does the proposal show promise of significant achievement in course development, in curricular development or in pedagogy, or does it show promise of a project or product of scholarly/creative importance? In areas of teaching and curricular improvement, the size of the audience or the longevity of the program may be a factor in consideration. Documents or letters of support from colleagues with expertise in the area of the project may strengthen the proposal. Faculty Development may ask for an opinion from another scholar in your field.

  4. Unity of the Project: These awards will be granted for a single project requiring and spanning the full three years (or, exceptionally, two years). Each year could be spent on a different "chapter" of a larger project, but there must be continuity between the sections. One cannot apply for multiple one-year long projects.

  5. The Applicant's Qualifications: Applicants should document their expertise in the area of their project. They may do this by submitting work previously done, annotated bibliographies, or a brief statement of their field within the discipline.

Procedure for Evaluation:

  1. Proposals will be reviewed by each member of Faculty Development using three categories: high, medium, and low.

  2. If, in their first reading, the committee members decide that there are not sufficient acceptable proposals for the funding period, they may decide to approve some applications, reject some, and return some applications with comments from the committee. Returned applications may be revised and resubmitted. Ordinarily a maximum of two weeks will be permitted for revision. Under no circumstances, however, will the revised proposals replace the previously approved fellowships.

  3. A summary of the committee members’ comments will be returned to the applicant if the proposal is not funded.

Reporting Process: For the first two years of the fellowship, a report is due on the first Wednesday in May; the final project report is due on the first Wednesday in September after the third year. (For two-year fellowships, the report for the first year is due on the first Wednesday in May and the report on the second and final year is due on the first Wednesday in September after the second year.) Failure to submit a satisfactory report by the deadline or to show adequate progress on a project after either of the first two years could lead to suspension or loss of the fellowship. The final report must be judged acceptable by the committee in order for the faculty member to remain eligible for Faculty Development funding. Each report will be read and commented upon by the Faculty Development Committee, and the fellow will receive a response to the report.

Reports should be addressed to the chair of the Faculty Development Committee and should include a narrative outlining the work done and the order in which it was completed. You should refer to the timeline and the yearly product you promised in your original proposal and show how the funding enabled you to meet your goals. Include evidence of the work accomplished toward completion of the product; such evidence might include examples of preliminary data collected, samples of presentation materials, copies of manuscripts in progress, revisions of course syllabi, an annotated bibliography, or a summary of data collected and analyzed.

The report should focus on the Faculty Fellowship project; however, other relevant overlapping work should be described as necessary to help the Faculty Development Committee understand what you have done. If the time-line has changed in any way, please explain and submit a revised time-line for the remaining years of the project. When plans or circumstances change along the way, it is the responsibility of the faculty member holding the fellowship to request committee approval of a revised proposal before the change is made. The final report of the fellowship should be a wrap-up of the entire project.

Please submit your report electronically to Becky Wallace (facdev@depauw.edu) in the form of a WORD or PDF document.

Faculty members who fail to submit reports on time will be ineligible for Faculty Development funding until the report(s) have been submitted and approved. Funded proposals, approved reports, and brief responses from the Faculty Development Committee will be placed automatically in a faculty member's personnel file.