Memo to USC Faculty
From: Michael W. Quick, Provost and Senior Vice President for Academic Affairs; Elizabeth Graddy, Vice Provost for Academic and Faculty Affairs
October 16, 2018
The university’s first priority is to provide our students with a world-class education that equips them to face a variety of challenges across disciplines. Innovative teaching fuels this central mission by continually employing new methods of teaching, developing new teaching approaches, enriching and reinventing curricula, and creating new programs. Academic convergence through leading-edge research, creativity in the arts, and new forms of clinical care and professional practice drive this curricular innovation.
To advance these efforts, we are pleased to introduce a new Interdisciplinary Teaching Grant program to fund grants that support interdisciplinary curriculum development through team-teaching and other teaching models that utilize expertise across the disciplines, the arts, and the professions.
With these grants, we aim to better serve:
- Our students – by exposing them to the broad strengths of USC faculty and multiple disciplinary perspectives on the issues addressed in their courses;
- Our faculty – by providing an opportunity to reach broader audiences and explore common problems from different disciplinary perspectives;
- The institution – by building relationships that increase our ability to engage in convergent research and multi-disciplinary approaches to education; and by providing a platform that encourages the development and dissemination of novel teaching methods that emerge from interdisciplinary academic partnerships.
We ask for submissions of proposals for funding this academic year to support new course proposals or offerings to begin in the 2019-20 academic year. Each proposal must include faculty from more than one school or more than one division within the College. Proposals that satisfy GE requirements or serve as requirements for more than one major will be given priority. A faculty review committee will select up to 10 projects annually, awarding a $20,000 stipend for each selected proposal.
For more information and specific elements of the proposals, please see https://faculty.usc.edu/scholarship/teaching/interdisciplinary-grant/. Submit proposals to Jacob Laux at ADM 204, MC 4019, or laux@usc.edu.
We want to thank the many faculty who recommended an initiative in cross-school teaching, and the members of the two working groups on cross-school academic initiatives with whom we consulted on developing this program.
Working Group on Cross-School Academic Initiatives
Michael Cousineau (Keck), Joanna Demers (Thornton), Judy Garner (Keck), Richard Green (Price, Marshall), Erik Johnson (Viterbi), Andrew Lakoff (Dornsife), Pat Levitt (Keck, Dornsife), Akira Lippit (Cinematic Arts, Dornsife), Cheryl Wakslak (Marshall), David Warshofsky (Dramatic Arts)
Working Group on Cross-School Academic Collaboration
Stephen E. Bradforth (Dornsife), Ted Budge (Keck), Sunny Donenfeld (Marshall), Donna Elliott (Keck), Akira Lippit (Cinematic Arts, Dornsife), Susan Lopez (Thornton), Donald Scotten (Gould), Andrew Stott (Dornsife), Gaurav Sukhatme (Viterbi), Julie Zissimopoulos (Price)
Cc: Wanda Austin
Academic Senate
Academic Deans
President’s Cabinet
Provost’s Cabinet