Invitation for Faculty Academy Mini-Course proposals – Deadline: April 4

Friday, March 18, 2022
[Summary: Eligible faculty members are invited to propose mini-courses for FAS Faculty Academy. Faculty Academy mini-courses are taught by and to FAS faculty (including SEAS), and may explore any topic. Proposals are due April 4, 2022, and courses will take place in late May. Faculty teaching Faculty Academy Mini-Courses will be provided with modest financial compensation. This program is part of the SAL2 suite.]
 
To: FAS ladder (including emeritus/a) and full-time multi-year instructional faculty
Cc: FAS Dean’s Office, FAS Steering
 
Dear FAS faculty members:
 
I am excited to announce the return of the Faculty Academy Mini-Courses program, part of the Scholars as Leaders; Scholars as Learners suite of offerings. We were unable to offer this opportunity in 2020 and 2021, and I am delighted that it will return this spring.
 
Faculty Academy Mini-Courses are short courses taught by and to FAS faculty (including SEAS). They are intended to generate new ideas and energy, to provide opportunities to learn and experiment with new methodologies, and to strengthen connections and community among FAS faculty.
 
You are invited to submit mini-course proposals by April 4, 2022.
 
Courses may be on any topic and may follow any format. You might propose a discussion-based seminar on art, literature, or a body of theory; a workshop on a new technique in data science or machine learning; a hands-on opportunity to engage in astronomical observation or scientific experimentation; etc. Mini-courses may draw on materials from classes you have taught many times, or they may address a topic you have long wanted to explore. They may be solo-taught or taught by pairs or small groups. Co-instructors may be from the same department, or vastly different ones. We hope you will explore and experiment!
 
Past courses have included:
  • Afrofabulations
  • The Hype and Reality of Artificial Intelligence
  • Modern Natural Language Processing
  • One Hundred Years of Russian Opera  
  • Teaching and Research with the R Language for Statistical Computing and Graphics
  • Understanding our Cosmic Neighborhood: A Hands-on, Eyes-on Tour of the Universe
Courses can take the form of lectures, seminars, or workshops. Courses should meet two to five times during the end of May and/or early June, for a minimum of roughly 6 and a maximum of roughly 25 hours, with the configuration determined by the faculty member leading the course. We expect that most courses will meet during the week of May 30. Courses may either meet in-person or may be offered in a hybrid format (ie: taught in-person with remote participation possible).
 
Faculty teaching Faculty Academy Mini-Courses will be provided with modest financial compensation (up to $5000, depending on the scale of the course) in recognition of their efforts towards preparation and teaching.  
 
Any ladder faculty member (including emeritus/a) with a primary or fully joint appointment in an FAS department or program (including SEAS), and any instructional (non-ladder) faculty member with a primary or fully joint full-time multi-year non-visiting appointment in an FAS department or program (including SEAS) is eligible to propose a course.
 
To allow us to engage in appropriate planning, if you would like to propose a course for May 2022, please upload a brief (one-page) precis using the online application form by April 4, 2022. If you have questions about the process, feel free to reach out to Alexandra Apolloni at sal2.fas@yale.edu.  
 
Depending on the level of interest, we hope to offer up to 5 courses this term. We will announce those courses to the community in late April.
 
We hope that many of you will elect to participate, either in this program or in one of the other programs in the SAL2 suite.
 
Warmly,
 
Tamar
 
Tamar Szabó Gendler
Dean, Faculty of Arts and Sciences
Vincent J. Scully Professor of Philosophy