DSU receives $300,000 Bush Grant

Dakota State University has received formal notification that the Bush Foundation Board of Directors voted to award full funding to Dakota State University’s $300,000 three-year faculty development grant proposal.

“Notification represents the affirmation of over a year’s effort by DSU faculty, including a wide range of planning activities to seek input from faculty across the campus and a thorough review by the Bush Foundation,” Dan Talley, assistant professor for the College of Business and Information Systems said. “This grant will enable DSU to further advance and support its mission to integrate technology into all aspects of the curriculum by providing additional resources for faculty development and to assess the effectiveness of the use of computer technology in teaching.”

DSU will receive $100,000 per year from the Bush Foundation, from Fiscal-Year 2002-03 to Fiscal-Year 2004-05. These funds, in conjunction with matching funds from DSU, will support the faculty development center’s staff (the coordinator’s half-time release, a graduate research assistant position, and secretarial support), teaching effectiveness grants (funding faculty course development and computer technology assessment projects), faculty facilitators (release-time for four faculty mentors across the campus to assist with faculty development), and numerous opportunities to enhance faculty teaching and student learning, in both formal seminars and informal gatherings.

“This three-year grant will enable DSU to establish a more formal, centralized approach to faculty development,” Cecelia Wittmayer, DSU Academic Vice President said. “The grant will also provide additional funding that will be used for faculty development programming. We are delighted that the Bush Foundation has provided DSU and our faculty with this exceptional opportunity.”

DSU will match the Bush grant funds, allocating approximately $130,000 in support in the first year. As the grant progresses, DSU will increase their support over the years, providing $200,000 in support by the third year and sustaining the faculty development program when the Bush Grant expires thereafter.

“In conjunction with substantial support pledged by DSU, including the implementation of a formal faculty development center on the DSU campus, this grant will fund the faculty development and assessment research activities,” added Talley.

The goal of the grant is to improve teaching and learning by students in the following four areas:

· Information Access: Improve the ability to access information. The ability can be reflected in the appropriate and effective use of various tools to locate and retrieve target resources from online databases and from Internet and intranet content.

· Information Processing: Improve the ability to process information. The ability can be reflected in the competence and expertise of sorting and evaluating information resources and data found on the Internet, in online databases, and elsewhere.

· Information Presentation: Improve the ability to present ideas and thoughts. The ability can be reflected in the effective use of digital technology to present information in various dimensions, such as demonstrating a procedure, describing a phenomenon, explaining a concept, and illustrating relationships.

· Interpersonal Communication and Interaction: Improve the ability and skills to communicate and interact with other faculty and students. The ability and skills can be reflected in the appropriate and effective use of digital communication tools to promote collaborative work, such as resource sharing, communal task analysis, project development, and solution negotiation.

To achieve these goals, the grant consists of three sets of activities. The first is the formation and operation of the faculty development center, currently called the Office of Technology, Teaching, and Learning (OTTL, hereafter). The grant will support most of the faculty development center staffing costs and DSU will support the cost of space, materials, equipment, and furnishings.

Activities that directly address the four goals will be prioritized for grant funding, but the faculty development center will seek to support all aspects of teaching, not just teaching using technology.

“DSU has made great strides over the past years and has been fortunate to have a large number of enthusiastic, entrepreneurial faculty who have successfully integrated technology into the courses,” Talley stated. “The faculty development programs, conducted by the OTTL and funded in part by the Bush Foundation grant, will expand DSU’s support for faculty by providing them with timely assistance in course design, implementation, and evaluation. That is, we want to help faculty include the most appropriate learning technologies into their courses, assist them in helping the students learn to use the technology to learn effectively, and help them evaluate the impact of the use of technology on student learning when the class is complete.”

The faculty development programs funded in part by the Bush grant will also provide faculty with an opportunity to share their practices and experiences with their colleagues and to learn from their peers, both on and off-campus. Faculty facilitators, experienced DSU faculty members who receive course release time, will also assist faculty in their course development, allowing faculty to turn to their peers for advice and guidance.

“This program will no doubt prove especially valuable to newly hired DSU faculty, as even experienced instructors from other institutions have found it necessary to make changes to their courses to fulfill the DSU mission,” Talley said.

A steering committee: Chair Dan Talley, Donna Hazelwood, Dale Droge, Mark Hawkes, Deb Knutson, Risë Smith, Lynette Molstad, David Peak, and Haomin Wang assisted with the planning grant proposal, planning grant activities including campus visits, putting together the faculty development grant proposal, and attending numerous meetings to discuss issues and establish plans and policies. Faculty and staff volunteered to join in on visits to four peer campuses, providing insight and observation.

The Bush Foundation is an independent private foundation whose endowment originated from the estate of Archibald Bush in the early 1970s. Among other uses, the funds generated by the endowment may be used to support faculty development to improve undergraduate student learning through the improvement of teaching at colleges and universities in Minnesota, North Dakota and South Dakota. From 1991 to 1996, DSU received two consecutive three-year grants from the Bush Foundation for faculty development. Largely funding communication interaction, technology instruction and professional training opportunities, some of those original programs have carried through to today, including the Online Writing Lab (OWL) and summer course development grant program offered through the Office of Distance Education and Web Technology.