The Boyer Model of Scholarship provides an opportunity for the School University Teacher Education Partnership (SUTEP) to support engaged scholarly activity through the scholarship of application in public schools. During the 2008-2009 academic year, SUTEP collaborated with the CEAP Dean’s Office to offer the Scholarship of Application Mini-Grants Program. The program is designed for a CEAP tenure-track faculty member or pair of faculty members, one of whom is tenure track and the other tenured, who will work on an identified project with a community institution such as a school.

The purpose of the mini-grant program is to help faculty move service activities to scholarly engagement. Financial support can assist faculty persons to implement, evaluate, and disseminate the results of a product based on the scholarship of engagement. Proposals could have an interdisciplinary or discipline-specific emphasis and should relate to faculty engagement agendas and the perceived need of the community institution.

The Scholarship of Application Mini-Grants Program is intended to primarily fund projects that can be completed within a year or to provide seed money to initiate projects that can be continued with funding from other sources. A detailed year-end report is required and results of the project will be presented at a future college-wide symposium.

The following mini-grants were funded during the 2008-2009 academic year:

• Dr. Kathleen Jorissen, assistant professor (ELF) - Developing Professional Learning Communities in Western North Carolina Schools
• Dr. Sharon Dole, associate professor (human services), and Lori Unruh, assistant professor (psychology) – Strategies to Increase African American Representation in Academically and Intellectually Gifted (AIG) Programs in Elementary Grades
• Dr. Phyllis Robertson, assistant professor; Russell Curtis, associate professor; and Mary Ford, assistant professor (all human services) – Equine Assisted Learning as an Intervention for Dropout Prevention: Cowboy Poetry

Read about SUTEP-sponsored Partnership School Grants