BTtoP Multi-Institutional Innovation Grants – Call for Proposals

Posted by Bringing Theory to Practice on December 18, 2018

Proposal Deadline: Monday, February 4, 2019
Awards Announced: By Friday, March 15, 2019

See the full RFP here.

Bringing Theory to Practice (BTtoP) is pleased to announce a new funding opportunity for colleges, universities, and other higher education organizations. Grant awards of up to $7,000 will support multi-institutional collaborations that advance—through innovative practices, programs, policies, or research—the core educational purposes to which BTtoP is committed. These grants are relatively modest, but their aim is ambitious: to catalyze innovation projects that bring institutions together in sustained collaboration.

The mission of BTtoP weaves together three commitments. We believe that undergraduate education should be holistic and transformative, nurturing active and integrative learning, personal well-being, preparation for meaningful work, and democratic citizenship. We believe that “educating the whole student” must include all students, no matter their background, interests, or educational setting. And we believe that the first two commitments require the reshaping of higher education. BTtoP works to advance these ideals through innovative practice, research, advocacy, and institutional change.

We invite multi-institutional grant proposals grounded in these basic commitments: to the education of the whole student, to equity and inclusion, and to the imperative for creative innovation. And we invite proposals that advance these commitments through multi-institutional partnerships.

BTtoP is placing a growing emphasis on the role of interinstitutional and intersectoral collaboration in fostering creative innovation and systemic change in higher education. We have long supported campus projects as seedbeds of change; we continue to encourage them. But this call focuses on multi-institutional partnerships through which innovative practices, programs, policies, or research can be collectively developed, implemented, and disseminated.

Within this general mandate, we invite proposals with a wide range of potential themes, activities, and modes of institutional partnership. Successful projects may focus on any of the four intertwined core purposes to which BTtoP is committed:

1. active and integrative learning
2. student well-being
3. civic engagement
4. preparation for meaningful work

We especially welcome proposals that model the interdependence among these goals. Proposals may focus on the collaborative development of innovative practices among partnering campuses, on the cocreation of curricula and/or cocurricula, and on research that tests and demonstrates the value of shared innovations, among other possibilities.

Bringing Theory to Practice is an independent national initiative operating in partnership with the Association of American Colleges and Universities (AAC&U) and supported by The Endeavor Foundation and the S. Engelhard Center. Information about the Bringing Theory to Practice can be found at www.bttop.org.