The purpose of the Try It! Mini-Grants is to spur thoughtful and engaged experimentation with one new pedagogical strategy or tool. In this way, the Reinert Center aims to support faculty members' development as teacher-scholars by promoting innovative thinking about and approaches to teaching, learning, and student engagement.
To see the current Call for Proposals, please visit our Currently Open Calls page.
Details about the program can be found below, including: Eligibility Requirements, Grant Expectations, Eligible Projects/Expenses, and Selection Criteria. To see list of previous mini-grant recipients, click here.
Awards are available to SLU faculty who hold teaching appointments in any department of the University and who will be continuing in their faculty positions for the 2023-2024 academic year. Faculty who were previously awarded a Try It! Summer Mini-Grant may apply; however, priority consideration will be given to those who have not previously received the award.
Although most proposals are submitted by individuals, inter- or intra-disciplinary projects involving two or more faculty members also are encouraged. In such cases, supporting materials should include a statement specifying whether the applicants are requesting one grant split between them or multiple parallel grants. In either case, joint proposals will be judged by the same criteria as individual ones.
Note: Faculty in the School of Medicine who do not teach formal classroom-based courses are eligible to submit a proposal as long as they propose to try one new teaching strategy within a defined educational experience, occurring over a defined period of time and with a defined cohort of learners (e.g., a clinical rotation).
Successful recipients will be expected to: 1) spend awarded funds as proposed through the Reinert Center; 2) meet with a Center staff member at least once, to determine effective, evidence-based strategies for incorporating and assessing the effects of trying their new tool or strategy; 3) measure the effects of the experiment in some way; 4) submit a brief report of work done at the end of the summer and at the end of the teaching semester(s); and 5) share the broad lessons they learn with the broader community. (The latter may be accomplished in a variety of ways, including but not limited to: submitting an article for publication, presenting at a disciplinary or pedagogical conference or at a Reinert Center event, contributing to the Center鈥檚 blog and/or web resources, etc.) Please note: faculty who wish to make student data public as part of this dissemination may need to obtain IRB approval.
Try It! funds may be used to fund professional development and/or to purchase equipment or materials that enhance teaching effectiveness and student engagement and for experiences/items that would not otherwise be funded or provided by the faculty member鈥檚 home department. All funds must be spent in the current fiscal year.
Examples of past grant-funded expenses include:
- Tables that can be reconfigured and used to create more flexible classroom seating and to study the effects of classroom seating on student collaboration and learning
- Writeable tablets, used with screencasting software to create supplemental instructional videos (e.g., for mathematical problem solving) and with financial calculators and other tools to solve financial equations, involve students actively in class, and project written actions onto the whiteboard.
- Scratch-off Immediate Assessment and Feedback cards for real-time assessment of learning.
- Anatomy simulation models to supplement labor and delivery training for medical residents
- Audio-visual equipment and software used to support 鈥渇lipped鈥� classroom experiments (e.g., web-cameras, microphones, other digital voice/video recording devices, writable tablets to capture worked problems on the screen, etc.)
- Several iPad minis with specialized apps used to observe physical movements and to calculate angles of motion
- Computer equipment to support service-learning experiences in which students digitized archival materials and created printed banners for use by local community partner organizations.
Other possibilities may include:
- Webinar or conference attendance (such as for a disciplinary teaching conference, the Intergroup Dialogue summer institute, etc.) to support faculty development related to a discipline-specific or other instructional innovation to be adopted in 2023-2024 (must be completed no later than June 30, 2023)
- Books and/or journal subscriptions related to particular pedagogical innovations (either within or across disciplines), such as books that would not otherwise be purchased by the recipient鈥檚 department.
- Hardware or software to support innovations aimed at making learning materials more accessible and inclusive (e.g., speech recognition / captioning software).
- Membership fees for a pedagogical professional organization / consortium focused on particular teaching, learning, and assessment strategies (either within or across disciplines) to be integrated into one鈥檚 course. (The focus must be on and must be something other than the regular membership dues for one鈥檚 disciplinary professional organization.)
- Materials and/or equipment that supports the development of cases, scenarios, and/or simulations for authentic learning and assessment.
- Audio-visual or other technology/production equipment to be used by SLU students as part of a course (e.g., portable media kits for student interviews or multi-media production).
Please Note: Any technology or equipment purchased is owned by Saint Louis University and must be returned to the Reinert Center in the event that the faculty member leaves the University.