The 2025 Teaching Innovation Grant application period is now closed.
The Center for Teaching Excellence and Innovation (CTEI) is pleased to announce a Teaching Innovation Grant Program for faculty who wish to employ innovative teaching strategies for their undergraduate courses in the Whiting School of Engineering and the Krieger School of Arts & Sciences. The CTEI is committing approximately $100,000 to this grant program. Applicants may request up to $20,000 for a proposed project. These grants are made possible by the generosity of Johns Hopkins Emeritus Trustee Christopher Hoehn-Saric and the Smart Family Foundation.
Program Details
CTEI staff are available to provide feedback on proposals before submission and offer assistance in identifying qualified students to assist in grant implementation. Once awarded, the CTEI will provide in-kind support, including project management, instructional design, access to and support for the use of CTEI multimedia software and equipment, pedagogical consultation, assessment assistance, and workshops to assist project teams and/or undergraduates enrolled in the courses.
Proposal are due no later than Friday, February 28, 2025 at 5:00 PM EST.
Note: In order to support many instructors, the CTEI requests that an individual apply for no more than one grant per application cycle.
2025 Awarded Projects
Krieger School of Arts and Sciences
Anthropology
A Community-Based Workshop for Engaged Environmental Learning in Baltimore
In this upper-level undergraduate seminar, students will be invited to participate in a collaborative effort to understand the history of environmental injustice in south Baltimore. Students will spend many weeks engaged in field-based research and sustained dialogue with a racially diverse population of local residents in south Baltimore, learning how local community leaders forge shared understandings of local history and consensus on desirable future pathways for development, while also participating in the making of accessible resources for public knowledge on local environmental matters.
Faculty: Anand Pandian
Chemistry/UWP
A New Writing Intensive Course to Train STEM Majors to Become Effective Science Communicators
A new writing intensive course will introduce junior and senior STEM majors to the art of science writing via an exploration of sites where science is happening in Baltimore. Through field trips to local museums and forensic labs, and interviews with researchers and editors of science magazines, students will identify opportunities to share their ideas and knowledge in engaging ways, and reflect on why science matters to broader audiences.
Faculty: Sunita Thyagarajan, Rebecca Wilbanks
Economics
Active Learning in Economics
The project’s main purpose is to increase active learning, student-faculty interaction, and student collaboration in Monetary Analysis (AS.180.261). The instructor will work with student assistants to record videos of lecture material and also create engaging in-class exercises and activities.
Faculty: Ludmila Poliakova
Film and Media Studies
B’more Real, Participatory Filmmaking as Transformative Pedagogy
JHU students will work alongside diverse populations at Paul’s Place, a community center in downtown Baltimore, to co-create films that unearth underrepresented narratives. This 200-level interdisciplinary film production class will equip students with practical filmmaking skills while practicing civic engagement, cultural understanding, and ethical representation.
Faculty: Wonjung Bae, Adam Rodgers
History
Documenting Black Life in Colonial Louisiana: Engaging Undergraduates in Primary Source Research
We will be developing course materials and curriculum for Documenting Black Life in Colonial Louisiana: Engaging Undergraduates in Primary Source Research, a one semester course creating historical narratives using transcriptions and translations of 18th century manuscript documents in French and Spanish. These documents form the basis for the stories of Black and Indigenous life in colonial Louisiana in the Keywords for Black Louisiana (K4BL) project.
Faculty: Jessica Marie Johnson
Psychological and Brain Sciences
Adding Weekly, In-Person Discussion Sections to Human Origins
This project aims to redesign the structure of Human Origins (AS.290.101) by adding weekly, in-person discussion sections to supplement the lecture-based format. For the discussion sections, we plan to develop a combination of group exercises and activities, in-class assignments, and problem sets designed to explicitly address the learning objectives, improve overall comprehension of the subject matter, and facilitate active learning and student collaboration.
Faculty: Andrew Gallup
Whiting School of Engineering
Center for Leadership Education
Communicating Ethical Dilemmas: Creating a Professional Case Study Repository for EN.661.110 Professional Writing and Communication
This project seeks to develop an Open Educational Resource (OER) to support the undergraduate course Professional Writing and Communication (EN.661.110) as it undergoes curricular revisions aligned with the Second Commission on Undergraduate Education (CUE2). The OER will take the form of a dynamic repository of case studies, instructional materials, activities, and assessments organized into thematic modules.
Faculty: Marina Choy, Berkley Conner, Cara Dickason, Elizabeth Walker
2023 Awarded Projects
Krieger School of Arts & Sciences
Classics
Race Before Race
Create a series of online modules featuring experts in ancient studies who will provide students with content and guidance that more fully reflects the diversity of the ancient Mediterranean world.
Faculty: Nandini Pandey
History of Medicine
Seeing Early Modern Medicine
Incorporate digital humanities tools into Health and Healing in Early Modern England, a 300-level undergraduate seminar about English medicine, 1500—1800.
Faculty: Mary Fissell
Mathematics
A Writing Intensive Version of AS.110.405 Real Analysis I
Redesign the curriculum of Real Analysis I to be a UWP approved writing-intensive course, without sacrificing content and its use as a prerequisite for many other courses within the major.
Faculty: Richard Brown
Public Health Studies
Development of a Well-being Requirement for Public Health Studies Major
Develop a “Well-Being Lab” requirement for the Public Health Studies (PHS) major, for students to learn about the multiple dimensions of well-being experientially and identify activities that support their own personal health and well-being.
Faculty: Maria Bulzacchelli, Cara McNamara, and Leslie Bauman
Writing Seminars
Teaching Fellows Project
Create an ‘Undergraduate Teaching Fellowship’ course which expands on the current ‘Teaching Writing’ course, to allow students a two-semester experience teaching writing in the Baltimore City Public Schools.
Faculty: Katharine Noel
Whiting School of Engineering
Biomedical Engineering
Training Engineering Students to Lead through In-class Experiential Management Learning
Introduce engineering students to the skills and knowledge required for effective engineering management through a structured in-class program that mimics the position of a technical manager in an engineering-focused organization.
Faculty: Eileen Haase
Computer Science
Artificial Intelligence as Teaching Assistant
Develop an application to pilot the use of artificial intelligence as a teaching assistant in one or more of the lower-level Computer Science (CS) courses at Johns Hopkins University.
Faculty: Ali Madooei, Sara More, Scott Smith, and Jason Eisner
Electrical and Computer Engineering
Developing and Redesigning the Electrical and Computer Engineering Capstone Senior Design Course
Develop and redesign the mandatory Capstone Senior Design course so that it will be held across two semesters and eventually allow for multidisciplinary senior design projects.
Faculty: Lucas Buccafusca