Each year, the Futures Initiative selects proposals from faculty across CUNY to inspire students with interdisciplinary and innovative courses. Our team-taught courses provide opportunities for faculty to learn from each other and their students in a more equitable learning-teaching arrangement. For students, courses are structured to support the connections between the three pillars of higher education: research, teaching, and service to society.
The Futures Initiative is especially interested in supporting diverse pairs of scholars from the GC and other CUNY colleges, including senior and junior faculty members who have not taught at the GC previously. We hope to support
graduate courses in any field that (1) have equity, diversity, inclusion, and innovation built into the course design and that (2) dedicate some of the course to graduate student teaching methods and translation of specialized research for a wider public. To date, most of the 30+ courses that the Futures Initiative has supported since 2015 have been electives (read more about them at
https://www.gc.cuny.edu/futures-initiative/courses).
Goals
- Diversity is a key goal of FI courses, both in terms of who is teaching, what they teach, and how they teach it. The goal is to offer courses that model not only demographic inclusion but include an awareness of the changing demographic of college-age students in the structure, content, and goals of the course offerings. Our FI courses are committed to inclusiveness in all of its forms.
- Critical pedagogy is another FI goal. FI courses include active, engaged learning, experiential learning, project-centered learning, both to offer graduate students the chance to develop as independent thinkers and to try out methods they might also use in the introductory courses they teach across the CUNY system.
- A social equity component—relating course material to social issues, modeling higher education as a public good—is another important factor.
EnhancementsIn addition to supporting the team-teaching arrangement through a course buy-out for CUNY campus-based faculty, FI offers:
- Designation as a Faculty Fellow
- $1,000 honorarium for each faculty member
- Access to HASTAC community for your students (and their students)
- Meet-ups for faculty to discuss and collaborate on syllabus, course design, pedagogy, technology, etc.
- A monthly newsletter where we publicize events and publications by our faculty and graduate students
Eligibility
- One professor in each team-teaching pair must be a GC Central Line faculty member.
- The Central Line faculty member’s program must agree to list the course as part of the program’s annual list courses, and must allow the course to count as part of that faculty member’s regular course load. (In other words, the Futures Initiative does not fund the Central Line faculty member’s participation.)
- The other professor in each team-teaching pair must be a faculty member based at another CUNY college. The Futures Initiative provides a course buy-out to support this faculty member’s involvement, working through Provosts on both campuses. ***This course should not be an “add on” to the faculty member’s workload; it should replace one course they would otherwise teach.***
The requirement of including a GC central line faculty member may be flexed if the GC program commits to funding one faculty member's participation. All disciplines are welcome. We especially encourage faculty members to consider diversity of all kinds in selecting a team-teaching partner. If you need assistance with identifying central line faculty members at the Graduate Center, please contact the Futures Initiative.
Questions may be addressed to Adashima Oyo, Executive Director, The Futures Initiative (
aoyo@gc.cuny.edu)
DEADLINE: March 15, 2023
