Each year, the NDIAS awards one year-long Teaching Lab Fellowship to a Notre Dame faculty member or a 2-3 person teaching team consisting of Notre Dame faculty members or Notre Dame faculty with supporting graduate students and/or postdoctoral scholars.
Designed to support the mission of Notre Dame and its faculty, the NDIAS Teaching Lab Fellowship provides resources for the creation of innovative, large-scale courses that will have a big impact on campus and the potential to influence public discourse.
The Fellowship gives exceptional teachers at Notre Dame the time, space, and financial backing to develop classes that help students work through questions of morality, faith, and meaning that arise in issues that are bigger than any single discipline.
Teaching Lab courses live on after the fellowship term, meeting the needs of Notre Dame students but also serving as prototypes of teaching-innovation across higher education.
In this spirit, the NDIAS Teaching Lab welcomes your most experimental teaching ideas.
Apply to Become a Teaching Lab Fellow
Applications for Teaching Lab Fellowships are due by 11:59 p.m. ET on Friday, November 4.
Benefits
Regular faculty receive a 2-course buyout (one course per semester during the academic year of the fellowship for each fellow).
Notre Dame Ph.D. students and postdoctoral scholars receive a stipend.
Teaching Lab Fellows also have access to course-development funds to be used for website development, travel for benchmarking, etc.
In addition, Teaching Lab Fellows are integrated into the larger cohort of faculty, graduate, and undergraduate Fellows at the NDIAS and participate in NDIAS seminars and Institute events.
Teaching Lab Fellows are expected to participate in the three-day introductory NDIAS workshop, which includes professional training in communicating research to broad audiences, as well as a workshop on writing for the general public led by an opinion editor at the New York Times.
Eligibility
All Notre Dame Faculty members are eligible to apply for a Teaching Lab Fellowship.
Notre Dame graduate students, Notre Dame 5+1 postdocs, and practitioners are eligible for a fellowship as part of a team with a Notre Dame faculty member.
The lead faculty member should submit the application on behalf of team-based projects.
Faculty should receive preliminary approval from their department chair for the fellowship course reduction, should the fellowship be awarded.
Applicants should have a plan for developing a course that serves at least 60+ students a year. Ideally, the Teaching Fellow and the associated department should commit to teaching and developing the course for at least three years after the fellowship period.
We strongly encourage applicants to form a team and apply with collaborators, but we allow only partially composed teams to apply (and the NDIAS can work with applicants to identify potential collaborators on campus before or after award).
Application Requirements
- Cover letter
- Completed application form
- Two-page course proposal (single spaced, see below for more information)
- Curriculum Vitae
In the application form, applicants should indicate that they have received confirmation from their department chair that they are eligible to receive a course buyout.
The two-page course proposal should include:
- A short description of the course and the major questions it will address. The course should serve at least 60 students per year in some format and target the moral development of students, helping them better appreciate or address questions of value and meaning in their own lives and the lives of others.
- A discussion of how the course fulfills an unmet student need in the curriculum. The plan for meeting the need should be genuinely innovative and benefit from a year of research and preparation. Applications may also discuss how the course coordinates with department requirements, program requirements, College requirements, and the Notre Dame Core Curriculum.
- A description of the ways in which the course will benefit from the resources of the Teaching Lab and how the course connects with our 2023-2024 institute theme, The Long Run.
Proposals for courses that meet the criteria for Integration courses or have especially innovative suggestions for enhancing the University’s Catholic mission are particularly encouraged.
Apply to Become a Teaching Lab Fellow
Applications for Teaching Lab Fellowships are due by 11:59 p.m. ET on Friday, November 4.
If you have questions about the NDIAS Teaching Lab Fellowship program or the application process, please contact Jeff Tolly, Assistant Director of Educational Initiatives, at jtolly@nd.edu.