Grants

All tenured and tenure-line faculty, non-tenure line faculty, faculty associates, and AP staff with teaching/teaching support responsibilities at Illinois State University and under contract at time of travel are eligible to apply. Proposals must meet the following requirements.

• Travel must occur between July 1, 2025 and June 30, 2026 and must involve a presentation on SoTL about the teaching and/or learning of ISU students as defined above.
• Funds must be spent for the travel and purposes outlined in the application.
• The conference may be a disciplinary, teaching-learning, or SoTL conference as long as the appropriate work is being presented.
• SoTL work involving research on human subjects and presentation must have IRB approval.
• A brief (500-700 word) report on the trip is due to the Cross Chair in SoTL within 45 days of travel.

ISU’s Cross Endowed Chair in SoTL requests applications for the SoTL Travel Grant Program - FY26. The program is designed to encourage public sharing of SoTL work related to the teaching and/or learning of ISU students. The program provides partial funding for travel to present SoTL work. Funds may be used toward conference registration and/or travel costs. This applies to a trip already taken (and not fully reimbursed) or to be taken, to present SoTL work this fiscal year. We expect to award 10-12 grants for FY26 across the fall and spring award cycles. Please note that faculty/staff are eligible for one travel grant (of any kind) per year.

If you have questions about this award program, please contact Dr. Jennifer Friberg.

Applications must be received by 5:00 p.m. on May 29, 2026 and should include:

1. A description (300 words, maximum) of the SoTL work being presented/shown/performed explaining the nature of the project and its connection to the teaching and/or learning of ISU students.
2. A description (200 words, maximum) of the conference or venue for presenting/sharing the work including the URL to the conference website.
3. Official documentation that the work has been presented or has been accepted for presentation. (Please do not expect reviewers to search for your listing in a large, online program).
4. An itemized budget and budget justification for the travel expenses, including a list of any other funding sources and/or any expenses already covered (300 word maximum).

Recipients will be notified 2 weeks after the grant application due date regarding the status of their application. All funds must be spent and reimbursement paperwork filed before June 30, 2026 (note, if reimbursement is filed more than 60 days after travel, taxes apply).

• The work to be presented/shown/performed is related to SoTL and is about the teaching/learning of ISU students.
• The SoTL work is of high quality (i.e., innovative, grounded in literature, appropriate method).
• The application meets requirements above (including a budget that is detailed and explained).
• Preference will be given to presentations beyond the local level.
• Prior SoTL grant or travel grant recipients have met all obligations of previous funding.

This hub-and-spoke SoTL project will bring together instructors from across Illinois State’s diverse teaching contexts to investigate how generative artificial intelligence (GenAI) tools (e.g., ChatGPT, Claude, Copilot) are shaping student learning, instructor decision-making, course design, and academic engagement.

It is hoped that this focused, collaborative project will help Illinois State lead national conversations about the pedagogical and ethical dimensions of GenAI. Join us in shaping a thoughtful, research-informed approach to AI in higher education.

Questions about the grant program should also be emailed to Dr. Jennifer Friberg.

Selected instructors will serve as “spoke” investigators, each designing and implementing a small-scale SoTL study within their own course or academic support setting. Projects should explore students' and/or instructors’ experiences, practices, or outcomes related to GenAI.

All investigators will:

• Align their inquiry with the central hub question.
• Participate in 2–3 cross-institutional collaborative meetings in both the fall 2025 and spring 2026 semesters.
• Share findings in a campus-wide showcase and through potential publication or conference submission.

• How first-year students use GenAI to revise writing assignments.
• Ethical dilemmas students face when integrating GenAI in communication projects.
• The role of GenAI in STEM lab report creation or code generation.
• Tutor strategies in supporting GenAI-assisted writing at the Writing Center.
• Professional judgment and GenAI in graduate-level clinical preparation.
• Pre-service teachers' understanding of AI's place in K–12 education.

Awardees will receive:

• $2000 in funds that can be used for investigator stipends, materials, or other project needs.
• Ongoing consultation with SoTL faculty mentors.
• Optional IRB support and writing guidance.

Each proposal (2 pages max) should include:

1. Instructor and course information.
2. Proposed research question(s).
3. Description of the teaching/learning context.
4. Methodology/approach.
5. Anticipated contributions to the central hub question.
6. Timeline for 2025–2026 implementation.

The Cross Endowed Chair in the Scholarship of Teaching and Learning requests proposals for the Scholarship of Teaching and Learning URG Grant Program. The program provides scholarship of teaching and learning (SoTL) small grants to study the developmental and learning outcomes of ISU students. At Illinois State University, we define SoTL as the "systematic study/reflection on teaching and learning [of our ISU students] made public." This definition allows for research in any discipline and the use of various methodologies. The work may be quantitative or qualitative in nature and focus on class, course, program, department, cross-department, and co-curricular levels. All SoTL work must be made public and peer reviewed in some way via presentation, performance, juried show, web site, video, and/or publication.

For 2025-2026, funded projects can focus on the systematic study/reflection of any teaching-learning issue(s) explicitly related to ISU students. Read the reports of previously funded grants (though on a variety of other topics). Grants of up to $5,000 are available. Funds may be used for any appropriate budget category (e.g., printing, commodities, contractual, travel, student help, and salary in FY27). While 4-5 grants are expected to be awarded, all awards are subject to the availability of funds allocated for FY27.

If you have questions about this award program, please contact Dr. Jennifer Friberg-Fort or call (309) 438-7706.

All tenured and tenure-line faculty, non-tenure line faculty, faculty associates, graduate teaching assistants, and AP staff with teaching or teaching support responsibilities at Illinois State University are eligible to apply. Each proposal, however, must be from a team of at least one faculty/staff member and at least one student (graduate or undergraduate). Team members may be from the same discipline or include members from more than one discipline.

The following information is required for all applications via the Office of Research and Graduate Studies internal grant site:

1. A narrative (1500 words, maximum) addressing the first 6 bullet points below under selection criteria should be uploaded.
2. A reference page/bibliography.
3. An itemized budget including a budget justification (i.e., details/sources on where/how numbers were obtained and calculated).
4. Optional appendices (e.g., draft of questionnaire or focus group questions).

In addition to checking that the proposal meets all eligibility and materials requirements noted above, three faculty/staff members with expertise in SoTL will review the proposals using the following criteria.

• Project clearly fits SoTL related to the teaching and learning of ISU students as defined above and demonstrates alignment with ISU's Framework for Inclusive Teaching Excellence.
• Proposal includes a brief but relevant literature review (‘theory’ and past relevant SoTL research) and how the proposed project ‘fits’ in this extant literature. (General and discipline-specific journals on college teaching-learning are available at both Milner Library and CIPD.
• Project uses appropriate methodology for gathering evidence to reflect on/study the teaching-learning issue or question posed, and this method is clearly described.
• Proposal clearly discusses roles for student researcher(s) who are on the SoTL project team.
• Project is ethically appropriate in terms of the use of human subjects and this is made explicit.
• Proposal lists specific possibilities for presentation, performance, representation, or publication of funded scholarship.
• Proposal contains an appropriate and detailed budget, and budget justifications including how/where budget figures were found and derived.

Acceptance of grant funding indicates agreement to fulfill these requirements.

1. If human subjects are involved--submission of an IRB protocol form and receipt of IRB approval before starting the project (as this research will be made public);
2. As appropriate to the discipline(s) and the project, submission of a representation of the work (e.g., article, video, web site, portfolio, poster) to a teaching newsletter, website, conference, show/competition, journal, or book by December 2027 or 2028 with a copy of that product and/or a summary report with information on the project to the Cross Chair. The submission or report will be placed on the ISU SoTL website.
3. Explicit recognition of this funding source in all presentations, publications, videos, etc. of the project (Funding source is ‘Illinois State University, Office of the Cross Endowed Chair in the Scholarship of Teaching and Learning, SoTL URG Grant Program, FY27).