[260] Money available for curriculum revisions at MTSU

FOR RELEASE: Jan. 30, 2013

EDITORIAL CONTACT: Gina Logue, 615-898-5081, gina.logue@mtsu.edu

MURFREESBORO — MTSU faculty have until Friday, Feb. 22, to submit proposals for stipends that can expand the curriculum and their instructional opportunities.

The Curriculum Integration Grants are offered each year by the MTSU President’s Commission on the Status of Women for the inclusion of the experiences and perspectives of women into the curriculum.

Three grants of $1,800 each are available to tenured or tenure-track faculty members who wish to pursue the revision of a course; the revision of a general education course for a study-abroad program; the creation of a new course; the reconceptualization of a current minor; or the creation of a new minor.

Courses that are developed or revised for the undergraduate curriculum and those that can be implemented within two years will be given priority. Faculty members who have received Curriculum Integration Grants within the past four years are not eligible.

Selected members of the commission’s Academic Issues Subcommittee will review the proposals. Successful proposals often have incorporated innovative teaching techniques and integrated women’s concerns with issues of race/ethnicity, class and sexual orientation.

Last year’s winners were Dr. Laura White, assistant professor of English, and Dr. Jessica Kratzer, assistant professor of communication studies.

White won for her creation of an English 2020 course titled “Mapping Gender in Colonial Adventure Narratives.” It is an examination of adventure writing in the late Victorian/Early Modernist period from the female perspective.

“This course offers students a chance to study a range of traditional and not-so-traditional adventure stories and to investigate how these stories map not only new physical spaces, but also the complexities of gender identities and relationships,” White wrote in her syllabus.

Kratzer won for her creation of a course titled “Sex and Communication,” which she calls her “dream course.”

She designed the first half of her class to track sexual communication through the life cycle, beginning with parent-child relationships and progressing through dating relationships, married and long-term couples and sex among the elderly.

“I think a lot of people feel embarrassed about their sexual pasts or unsure about how their partners will feel about their sexual pasts, even if they feel OK with it,” Kratzer said.

Grant recipients will be required to present their completed projects at the fall commission meeting to be held at the beginning of the fall 2013 semester. Recipients also will be required to provide a copy of the finished syllabus, course proposal, minor proposal or revised fall minor no later than that meeting.

To apply, go to http://www.mtsu.edu/pcsw/grants.php. For more information, contact Dr. Samantha Cantrell at 615-494-8751 or samantha.cantrell@mtsu.edu.

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