Can the grants be used to buy out a course?

No. Administration has been clear that they are not interested in buying out courses. Faculty support is in the form of supplemental salary. 

Do you have a sample or model grant application you could share?

We don’t at this time, but a sample will soon be made available on the General Education website.

Does Penn State have a preference between Inter-domain and Linked courses?

There is no University preference. However, either one or the other could be preferred by students. An Inter-domain course has the potential to open up exploration in General Education electives for students. Linked courses would lend themselves to cohort-based student groups and other unique scenarios.

How difficult would it be to get a General Education designation on an existing course that you’d like to modify to be an Integrated course? Would it be easier to start fresh with a new course?

It would be easier to work with an existing course rather than starting from scratch. One consideration when modifying existing courses is how widely the current course is prescribed in existing majors.

Can an Inter-domain course be linked to another course? If a student takes these two courses, will that satisfy the General Education requirement?

Inter-domain courses may not be Linked; they can be either Inter-domain or Linked. Students have to pick one or the other and, similarly, faculty have to pick one or the other.

Can General Education Seed Grant funds be used to support graduate students to assist with course preparation?

No. Seed Grants are for faculty support only.

Most of our General Education requirements are also required courses for our majors. If we create a pair of Linked courses, can our students apply one course to their major and the other to their General Education requirements?

Yes, as long as it doesn’t violate the existing firewall. General Education classes cannot have the same course abbreviation as the major, i.e. an ECON major cannot use an ECON course as a General Education, but they may, hypothetically, use a required PSYCH course as a General Education.

Will the proposal committee take campus-specific needs into consideration when approving classes that may not necessarily be “transferable” to most other campuses?

Yes, the proposal committee will take campus-specific needs into consideration when reviewing Seed Grant proposals.

Will current students be permitted to take Inter-domain courses? How will they count toward their General Education requirements?

Yes, current students may take Inter-domain courses, but they will have to apply them within current General Education rules, which means the course would only apply to one of the domains. Two current courses at University Park are modeled in this way–one has Senate approval to be listed both as a GA and a GH. Students have to choose to which domain to apply the course for their requirements. That is one of the differences in the new General Education requirements–students will not be required to pick; the course will apply to both domains. Current students can work with their adviser to determine how these courses may apply to their requirements.

Five colleges automatically provide extra support for Seed Grants. How does that work, and how do I answer the question in the application form: “Have you received, or do you expect to receive, additional compensation for the development or revision of this course (e.g. campus or college-based)? If so, please detail.”

If you list your faculty affiliation as one of these five colleges, it will automatically be considered by the college. With respect to the question on the proposal—to try to get ahead of the curve, several colleges and campuses such as Liberal Arts, Science, Abington, and Behrend have offered various incentives for faculty to develop these courses. We are interested in learning if you have been awarded any of these monies. If you have been awarded monies through one of those avenues it will not necessarily prevent you from being awarded money from the Office for General Education. What we are interested in doing is topping off the money you’ve already received to make awards more equitable.

Can we require that students concurrently take both sections of a Linked pair of courses?

Yes, you may. You would do so by putting concurrent requirements on the courses. Currently, it is not Senate policy that Linked courses be taken concurrently because the policy was designed to be flexible. However, there are strong pedagogical reasons why you might want the classes to be taken together, so you are free to require that. Similarly, you can require that one be a prerequisite for another. That wouldn’t require that they be taken in a specific timeframe, but it is an option.

Who should I contact at the Schreyer Institute for Teaching Excellence (SITE) for a pre-proposal consultation having to do with ethics–SITE staff linked to my field or SITE staff linked to General Education?

Please email SITE@psu.edu and a consultant will be assigned to you. If you have a consultant with whom you’ve worked that you are more comfortable contacting, feel free to reach out to them, but there are two or three consultants that work more specifically with General Education.

Will the committee compare course proposals to courses already on the books in hopes of avoiding redundancy? Or are already existing courses irrelevant in the award process?

We would like to avoid redundancy, but it is not the primary purview of this proposal review committee. That would be done by the Senate Committee on Curricular Affairs.

Are there any thoughts about potential structures for having instructors co-teach Inter-domain courses?

Various models are being discussed at the highest levels. Final decisions on co-teaching will be made at the local administrative level; it is not up to the Office for General Education or the review panel.

Can adjunct employees pair with full-time employees to create an Inter-domain course?

Yes, any faculty member may submit a proposal–full-time, part-time, or adjunct. We understand that General Education is taught by a wide variety of faculty.

Is this $400,000 a one-time pool of monies, or do you see Seed Grant opportunities like this in the future?

The Office for General Education is hopeful that it is not a one-time pool. The exact way it will be used in the future will differ as we move through the implementation process. At some point, we will have a critical number of Integrative Studies courses and, at that time, we will focus money on other ways to improve student learning within general education.

Is the $1,000 ancillary money on top of the $5,000 (or $8,00 or $15,000) awards?

Yes, the ancillary money is in addition to the salary supplement.

Can a single faculty member be involved in more than one grant proposal?

Yes.

Are the seed grants envisioned as a "flat" amount awarded to all successful proposals, or do you expect to give out seed grants of various amounts?

We may need to adjust the amounts in order to accommodate as many faculty as possible, but similar proposals will receive the same amount.