SCDG Archives - Duke Interdisciplinary Studies

A Summer of Course Design for Five Departments

May 1, 2023May 1, 2023Sarah Dwyer

Text: Duke Summer Course Development Grants. German Studies, Marine Science & Conservation, Psychology & Neuroscience, Religious Studies, Sociology. Headshots of scholars in each department.

Five departments have been awarded 2023 Summer Course Development Grants from Duke’s offices of Undergraduate Education and Interdisciplinary Studies in partnership with Duke Learning Innovation.

Faculty members and Ph.D. students will collaborate on the development or redesign of five summer session courses that will be offered regularly to undergraduates beginning next year. Two courses will be revised, while three will be new.

2023 Summer Course Development Grants

German Studies

The History of Fantasy (New)

Faculty: Jakob Norberg & April Henry
Ph.D. Student: Ian McArthur

Marine Science & Conservation

Experimental Design & Research Methods (New)

Faculty: Meagan Dunphy-Daly & Tom Schultz
Ph.D. Student: Brittney Mitchell

Psychology & Neuroscience

Biological Bases of Behavior (NEUROSCI 102/PSY 107 Revised)

Faculty: Leonard White, Tom Newpher & Kevin LaBar
Ph.D. Student: Anna P. Smith

Religious Studies

Religion & Popular Culture (New)

Faculty: David Morgan
Ph.D. Student: Claire Rostov

Sociology

Methods of Social Research (SOCIOL 332 Revised)

Faculty: Jenifer Hamil-Luker
Ph.D. Student: Elizabeth Johnson

What Comes Next

Each department will receive a funding package for one Ph.D. student in Summer 2023 to work as a research assistant developing course materials in partnership with one or more faculty members, and for the faculty to receive research funding.

Duke Learning Innovation will provide formal guidance in course design through intensive kick-off workshops May 16-18 with faculty and student grant recipients. Ongoing consultation will be available throughout the summer.

The resulting courses will be offered regularly through Duke Summer Session beginning in 2024. In some cases, the Ph.D. students who helped create the courses will serve as the instructors.

Purpose of These Grants

Now in its second year, the Summer Course Development Grants internal funding program was designed to strengthen undergraduate education while furthering Duke’s commitment to excellence in Ph.D. training.

Departments gain new or redesigned courses that align with their curricular priorities, faculty members receive research funding, and undergraduates benefit from a greater number and range of summer courses that incorporate innovative approaches.

Participating Ph.D. students receive summer funding and build skills in course design and pedagogy. Those who go on to teach the resulting courses also gain experience as effective instructors.

Future Ph.D. students will benefit from these grants by tapping into an archive of course materials to support their own summer teaching.

Learn More

See which departments received 2022 Summer Course Development Grants and read about four of the courses in these stories:

Duke Ph.D. Students Help Create Unique Undergraduate Summer Courses

March 2, 2023March 2, 2023Sarah Dwyer

Through Summer Course Development Grants, Ph.D. students learn about course design and teaching while enhancing undergraduate education within Duke’s departments

Adults standing together in a group of about a dozen, outside in warm weather under an archway. — Grant recipients at a course design workshop led by Duke Learning Innovation in 2022 (Photo: Blythe Tyrone)

By Khilan Walker

Approaches to learning and teaching are constantly evolving, and any curriculum benefits from periodic revision and new offerings. It takes time to develop new courses from scratch or even to redesign existing courses, though, and faculty members are already juggling a heavy load.

A new grant program supports departments in the development or redesign of undergraduate courses that will be offered regularly during Duke Summer Session. By involving Ph.D. students and drawing on experts from Duke Learning Innovation, the grants seek to foster innovative courses while helping doctoral students gain skills and experience.

Last year, nine departments received Summer Course Development Grants from the offices of Undergraduate Education and Interdisciplinary Studies. Here are two of them.

The Future of Ocean Use

Jon Choi

Within the Department of Marine Science & Conservation, Ph.D. student Jon Choi worked alongside faculty members Rebecca Vidra and John Virdin to create a course entitled “The Future of Ocean Use.” Choi stated that the course grew out of a webinar series hosted by Oceans@Duke that highlights ways in which Duke researchers and alumni are working on ocean-related issues.

Vidra and Virdin wanted to make the webinars’ content more sustainable, so they applied for the Summer Course Development Grant and asked Choi to help develop a course.

At first, Choi struggled to decide how to create a cogent throughline for the course from the diverse webinars. He decided to focus on developing writing skills at the undergraduate level, using what he learned as a Duke Law student. Through two-page policy memos summarizing complex issues, students will hone their ability to think critically about the challenges facing the world’s oceans, consider the intended audiences for their writings, and improve their use of active voice and sentence structure.

The course begins with two weeks focused on learning critical writing and research skills, starting with an initial draft memo summarizing the rapid acceleration of human use of the ocean. During the following four weeks, students will craft two memos per week on a variety of topics, such as deep seabed mining, illegal fishing, small scale fisheries and offshore wind.

These memo assignments start with a prompt that places students in the role of a junior staff member who must brief people in different organizations.

To help students strengthen their writing, Choi built in numerous writing workshops and one-on-one meetings. By the end of the course, students will have written nine memos. They can then reflect on them and revise their five favorite memos for grading.

Beyond Ordinary Consciousness: The Science, Philosophy and Phenomenology of Contemplation

Joseph Diehl

The Department of Psychology & Neuroscience was another recipient of a Summer Course Development Grant. Faculty members Bridgette Hard, Moria Smoski and Richard Jaffe teamed up to propose a new course along with Ph.D. student Joseph Diehl.

As an undergraduate student at Brown University, Diehl majored in contemplative studies, an experience that he loves to this day. He learned about the history and context of contemplative practices, and even got to try some of them out during ‘meditation labs.’

For the new Duke summer course, Diehl interacted with various staff and Duke Learning Innovation to figure out how he could adapt his Brown experience.

The grant included a three-day workshop on inclusive course design led by Duke Learning Innovation. The program focused on how student learning outcomes should inform course design, considerations for planning short-term summer courses, and leveling up on skills and tools needed to complete the course design by the end of the grant period. The teaching consultants also provided ongoing guidance as needed.

Diehl wanted his course to address the challenge of loneliness that increased over the past few years, exacerbated by the pandemic. “I’m hoping not just to create a class, but to build a community on Duke’s campus,” he said. He also hoped he could inspire some students to create a long-term contemplative practice beyond the class.

During the course, students will participate in meditation labs, learning about philosophical and religious traditions as well as the scientific applications of such traditions. Diehl included time for in-class meditation, while coursework will be done individually. He opted to divide students into three different groups, with an opportunity for each group to teach others about what they learn.

Both Choi and Diehl built valuable skills and received summer funding for their work last year. Their departments now have two innovative new courses that will add to their regular summer offerings for undergraduates.

See a related story on the Summer Course Development Grants.

Khilan Walker ’24 is a content writer in the Office of the Provost. He is majoring in political science with a minor in African & African American studies.

How New Summer Courses Enhance Both Undergraduate Learning and Ph.D. Training

March 2, 2023March 2, 2023Sarah Dwyer

Duke Ph.D. students help departments with course development while building their own teaching skills

Three students wearing goggles stand in front of their chemistry experiment inside a lab. — Undergraduates in a Chemistry 202 Lab class in 2019 (Photo: Megan Mendenhall)

By Lily Neusaenger

In lab courses across the country, undergraduates tend to carry out weekly experiments that aren’t related to each other. Actual research labs, by contrast, operate differently.

Taylor Outlaw

“A growing trend in science education is to turn these laboratory courses into more inquiry-based experiences, where students participate in a semester-long research project,” said Taylor Outlaw, a Ph.D. student in chemistry. Talking with Charlie Cox, associate professor of the practice of chemistry, Outlaw learned that he was interested in making some changes along these lines.

Last year, Chemistry was one of nine departments that received Summer Course Development Grants for the creation or redesign of courses that will be offered regularly to undergraduates beginning in Summer 2023. Cox and Outlaw collaborated on revising CHEM 202L into a new Organic Chemistry II Laboratory for Duke’s summer session.

“It’s really [about] trying to showcase the scientific method and a more realistic experience of a hands-on lab,” Outlaw said. “When you’re a Ph.D. student or a full-time researcher, nobody does a ‘dump, dump, stir, throw it out’ process. Whatever you’re doing, you’re either characterizing it, doing something new with it or trying to answer a big-picture question.”

Samar Miled

This kind of transformative course development is happening outside of labs too.

For the Department of Romance Studies, Senior Lecturer Laura Florand teamed up with Ph.D. student Samar Miled to revise FRENCH 204A into Advanced Intermediate French with a focus on culture and sustainability in Tunisia.

Miled, a Tunisian native, was able to bring her cultural knowledge to the Duke in Tunisia study abroad program, which includes the revised course.

“Through extensive travel throughout the country, we will delve into cultural issues, including the ongoing ten-year revolution, while also emphasizing ecology and sustainability,” she explained. “We want to decentralize and allow students to discover […] different French-speaking regions” beyond France.

Creative Strategy Behind the Grants

These new grants from Duke’s offices of Undergraduate Education and Interdisciplinary Studies are intended to foster Duke Summer Session courses that align with curricular priorities, incorporate innovative approaches and provide teaching opportunities for Ph.D. students.

Duke Learning Innovation furnishes course design guidance through an intensive workshop and ongoing consultation.

More broadly, the grant program is a strategic way for Duke to strengthen undergraduate education and respond to increased demand for summer courses, while furthering the university’s commitment to excellence in Ph.D. training.

Participating doctoral students build skills in course design and pedagogy, and they receive summer funding — a result of creative thinking about how to provide 12-month Ph.D. funding. Those who go on to teach the resulting courses also gain experience as effective instructors. Participating faculty members receive research funding.

Becoming Better Teachers

Charlie Cox

“Charlie Cox has been amazing,” Outlaw noted, “and I learned a lot from Duke Learning Innovation about the student-centered approach to teaching — reflecting upon what we actually want students to come out of this course understanding or knowing about,” she said. “Not everyone that takes organic chemistry is going to be a chemist, but skills like writing, inquiry, thinking through the scientific method, being able to develop a solution to a problem [are] broadly applicable across disciplines. That’s what I want students to come out of my class with.”

Outlaw hopes to embark on a teaching-intensive academic career after graduation. “I feel like this has been a really cool, low-stakes practice run for when I’m actually doing this and am in full control of everything that occurs.”

For Miled, who comes from a traditional educational background, “Duke Learning Innovation taught me things like how to teach using games, especially with language. We don’t want [our courses] to be boring.”

Two women stand on a boat with hats and glasses, view a slight view of the sea behind them. — Laura Florand and Samar Miled in Tunisia

Learning Innovation also invited psychiatrists and psychologists to advise the Ph.D. students on working with undergraduates, which Miled found helpful. “I think it’s very important to think about mental health, especially in a diverse setting such as a classroom, and to know how to behave with every student — what to say, what to avoid saying, how to think about their comfort and needs.” She said the grant experience boosted her confidence and made her feel comfortable teaching something new in a different setting.

These two examples illustrate the Summer Course Development Grants’ goals, which lie at the intersection of enhancing undergraduate education, addressing the rise in summer course demand, supporting Ph.D. training and providing 12-month funding. Looking ahead, future Ph.D. students will benefit from these grants by tapping into an archive of course materials to support their own summer teaching.

See a related story on the Summer Course Development Grants.

Lily Neusaenger ’25 is a content writer in the Office of the Provost. She is majoring in computer science with minors in statistical science and creative writing.

Summer Course Development Grants Available for Curricular Priorities

December 14, 2022April 10, 2023Sarah Dwyer

Text that reads Summer Course Development Grants over background photo of students walking on Duke campus during summer.

Deadline: February 6, 2023

Overview

Duke’s Office of Undergraduate Education and Office of Interdisciplinary Studies, in partnership with Duke Learning Innovation, are opening a second round of proposals for Summer Course Development Grants. Schools, departments and other units that offer undergraduate curricula are eligible. These grants seek to foster the development or redesign of summer session courses that:

Align with the curricular priorities of the school, department or other unit
Have a good chance of attracting significant student interest from year to year
Incorporate innovative pedagogical approaches, which may include creation of digital learning assets to supplement or deliver instruction and/or enhance student engagement; such resources can be asynchronous components as part of an in-person class experience, or the development of hybrid courses
Will be taught by one or more Ph.D. students on a regular basis, beginning the following summer.

RFP round two released	December 14, 2022
RFP deadline for submission	5:00 p.m., February 6, 2023
Recipients notified	March 2023
Ph.D. student funds made available	May 2023
Faculty research funds made available	July 2023
Funds to be expended by	September 2023

Rationale

The summers of 2021 and 2022 demonstrated significant demand by Duke students and undergraduates from other institutions for summer courses that enable them to make progress on their educational plans. We want to capitalize on that interest while allowing departments and programs to expand and improve their undergraduate curricula and provide Ph.D. students with opportunities to receive summer funding and gain experience as effective teachers.

This grant program provides schools, departments and other units that offer majors, minors or certificates the opportunity to develop or redesign a regular summer course that fulfills a critical curricular niche and will likely attract strong student interest. The data from Duke’s summer sessions indicate that broadly based courses, particularly those fulfilling widely needed curricular requirements, are most likely to attract significant enrollment. More specialized offerings that dovetail closely with doctoral research topics, by contrast, typically under-enroll and risk cancellation.

One challenge for many Ph.D. students who teach in the summer has been the development of course materials. Through this funding opportunity, we hope to generate departmental or program resources that instructors of record can build on from year to year, lowering the time summer instructors must invest to get a course up and running. Those resources might include asynchronous elements (e.g., recorded lectures, interviews or conversations) and guidelines for assignments, such as guided research, data analysis, primary source analysis, group projects and ongoing partnerships with Durham- or Triangle-based organizations.

Grant Details

Departments or other units that are awarded a Summer Course Development Grant will receive a funding package for one Ph.D. student in the summer (a full stipend of $8,415, including fringe, coverage of the full summer health fee, and tuition) to work as a graduate assistant developing course materials in partnership with one faculty member. Departments or other units do not need to provide any funds. The faculty member overseeing the graduate assistantship will receive $3,000 in research funding; applications with more than one faculty member will receive up to $5,000 in shared research funding.

Duke Learning Innovation will provide structured course design guidance, which will take the form of a required, in-person, three-day workshop series May 16-18, 2023, ongoing consultation with faculty and graduate assistants funded by the grants, and a culminating presentation of the summer’s work. Learning Innovation will also convene the graduate assistants periodically to share ideas and offer feedback on initial plans. Ideally, the Ph.D. student who works on developing or redesigning a course will have the chance to teach the resulting new or redesigned course the following summer.

Restrictions and Parameters

Funds may only be used for Ph.D. student graduate assistantships and faculty research funds.
The graduate assistantship must take place between May 15 and August 18, 2023.
Ph.D. students should spend approximately 19.9 hours/week on course development work, which should include syllabus creation, creation of course materials, structures for graded and ungraded assignments, and any asynchronous modules.
Courses must be offered during one of the two 2024 summer sessions, with the further expectation that units will continue to offer the course thereafter.

Eligibility

Any school, department or other unit that offers an undergraduate major, minor or certificate is eligible for the grant.
Applications should be submitted by the relevant director of undergraduate studies.
Two or more units may submit a joint application for a course that is or will be cross-listed.
International Ph.D. students who are included in the application as the graduate assistant should consult with Duke Visa Services for assistance with any visa-related requirements.

Review Process

The selection process will be overseen by the vice provosts for undergraduate education and interdisciplinary studies.

Proposal Requirements

Applications should consist of:

A description (maximum two pages) of the new or revised course, including anticipated course learning outcomes; learning approaches (inverted learning, asynchronous learning assets, synchronous components, etc.); assignments and modes of assessment; and role of the course within the unit’s curriculum (NOTE: we understand that for new courses, these ideas will often be tentative)
If the proposal is to redesign a course, the existing syllabus
A brief overview from the department or unit providing a high-level sketch of course development activities to be completed during the graduate assistantship
A letter of support from the faculty partner or partners, discussing their role in assisting/overseeing the course development process, and acknowledging that the selected Ph.D. student will need to attend the in-person May workshop series
A CV (maximum two pages) for each faculty partner

If a department or other unit has already identified an interested Ph.D. student who would serve as graduate assistant and likely teach the developed course the following summer, the application may also contain a letter of interest and CV (maximum two pages) from that student.

How to Apply

Proposals will be accepted using Formstack. The deadline for submission is 5:00 p.m. on February 6, 2023.

Contact

For any questions related to the online application and/or logistical questions, please contact the Office of Interdisciplinary Studies. For questions about the application, or to talk through specific ideas for a proposal, please contact Gary Bennett, vice provost for undergraduate education, or Ed Balleisen, vice provost for interdisciplinary studies.

FAQ

I am a faculty member with a new course idea. Am I eligible to apply for this grant?

Any school, department or unit that offers an undergraduate major, minor or certificate is eligible for a Summer Course Development Grant. Please coordinate with your department director of undergraduate studies, who will need to bring the idea forward and submit the application in Formstack.

Our program offers a certificate but we do not have Ph.D. students in our program. Am I eligible to apply for this grant?

Yes, any school, department or unit that offers an undergraduate major, minor or certificate is eligible for a Summer Course Development Grant. Ph.D. students from other programs can be added to the application as a possible graduate assistant. Please contact Ed Balleisen if you need assistance with finding a Ph.D. student for your application.

Our department received a grant but we have been unable to hire a Ph.D. student for the graduate assistant position. Do we still receive the grant?

No; disbursement of funds is dependent upon recruiting and hiring a student for the graduate assistant position.

Can a master’s or professional student be hired for the graduate assistant position?

No; only Ph.D. students are eligible for this funding.

Our proposed course will be a special topics course and will only be taught once. Are we eligible?

No; we are looking to seed courses that will be taught from summer to summer and that answer curricular needs.

Our proposed course will be cross-listed. Are we still eligible for a Summer Course Development Grant?

Yes, though in this case, both units should endorse the proposal.

We would like two faculty members to serve as advisers for the course development process. Is that allowed?

More than one faculty member may partner on the grant. Awardees with more than one faculty partner will receive up to $5,000 in shared research funding.

We have more than one Ph.D. student whom we would like to hire for the graduate assistant position. May we hire more than one student?

No; this funding is for one graduate assistant position filled by one Ph.D. student.

Get Support to Develop or Redesign a Summer Session Course

October 13, 2022December 22, 2022Sarah Dwyer

Text that reads Summer Course Development Grants over background photo of students walking on Duke campus during summer.

Additional SCDG proposals are being accepted in a second round with a deadline of February 6, 2022: NEW RFP

Deadline: November 30, 2022

Updated 10/31/22 to reflect that departments/units do not need to commit any funds toward the Ph.D. student stipends, which will be covered in full by the grants.