MEMORANDUM Email Subject Line: Funding Available to Departments for Honors Courses

MEMORANDUM //email subject line: “Funding available to Departments for Honors Courses”//

Date: September 27, 2017

To: L&S Department Chairs, Associate Chairs, Department Administrators, and Undergraduate Advisors (please forward to your faculty)

From: Sabine Gross, Director, L&S Honors Program

Re: Funding Available for Departments that offer additional Honors Courses and Sections - Call for Proposals for Fall 2018-Summer 2019 “H” Honors Courses and Sections

Are you a faculty member interested in offering an Honors class or section, but worried about being able to “afford” it given other instructional/curricular needs? The Honors Program can help. We offer UIF (Undergraduate Initiative) funding that allows departments to develop their Honors curricula without compromising their regular offerings, as described below. We can offer replacement lecturer funding and S&E funds to help departments. To aid with longer-term curricular planning, please note that UIF Honors funding is renewable (by application) for subsequent years. Honors courses with few enrollment restrictions (such as level and prerequisite) are most welcome. All departments are welcome to apply for UIF funding.

Honors courses are typically enriching, engaging, and rigorous enough to appeal to highly- motivated students. They should have relatively small enrollment caps and should require a significant amount of writing, discussion or independent work. UIF funded courses or sections should carry the “H” (Honors only) designation in the Timetable and be restricted to Honors students.

There are two funding options: 1. Departments may request short-term salary funding for new Honors courses at the 33.3% lecturer rate. Under this option, a department agrees to offer a new Honors course and to assign a regular faculty member (not a lecturer) to teach it. The funds allow the department to hire a lecturer to teach elsewhere in the curriculum. The intent of the funding is to allow the department to continue to offer the course that would otherwise have been taught by the faculty member who will be assigned to the Honors course. In practice, departments are free to assign the temporary lecturer to any course they choose (except to the UIF-funded Honors course or other “H” Honors courses or sections). In awarding these grants, we will give preference to departments that are committed to offering Honors courses in areas of high undergraduate demand that fulfill the requirements and the spirit of the Honors in the Liberal Arts degree. UIF Honors funding is intended to allow departments to increase their total offerings of Honors courses.

2. Departments may also request funding for “H” Honors discussion sections or labs of large lecture courses if those sections are led by the faculty member who is the instructor of the course and the discussion section could not otherwise be taught. Under this option, departments are provided with an S&E allocation of $1,200 for use by the faculty member who is teaching. Please note: be sure to address the requested points in Item 13 of the UIF course proposal form. Failure to address these items has, in the past, resulted in proposals not being funded. Item 13 reads as follows:

“13) Please attach a syllabus of the proposed Honors course. If the course has been offered previously, please include summary course evaluations (including the question prompts and rating scale). We also request a brief cover letter from the Department Chair or Associate Chair addressing how the course will contribute to or enhance the larger Honors curriculum of the department and/or the College’s Honors in the Liberal Arts curriculum, along with some reference to the applicant’s quality as a teacher (this could include teaching awards, student evaluations compared with departmental averages, or other evidence). Please be sure that the syllabus provides enough detail on readings, assignments, projects, and evaluation processes to allow the Faculty Honors Committee to determine the appropriateness of this course for Honors students.”

Printed proposals can be submitted to the L&S Honors Program Office in Washburn Observatory (1401 Observatory Drive), OR by email with a single PDF for each course proposal to [email protected]. The deadline is 4:00 p.m. on Monday, November 20, 2017. The Faculty Honors Committee will review the proposals and make award decisions at their December 2017 meeting. Departments will be notified of the award status of their UIF proposals by December 20, 2017. Visit https://honors.ls.wisc.edu/facstaff/uif for an electronic copy of the application form.

If you have questions about the application, contact Matt Kohlstedt (262-2454 or [email protected]).

The College of Letters & Science considers its strong Honors Program an asset. Honors courses provide the kind of high-impact instruction that is an integral and valued part of the L&S mission. If you have any questions about Honors offerings, curricular balance, and allocation of faculty, we’ll be delighted to talk to you (in person, by email, or by phone). Please contact Jacqui Guthrie (262-2984 or [email protected]) or Sabine Gross (262-2984 or [email protected]).

Sabine Gross Director, L&S Honors Program Professor of German