General Call: Thrive Pedagogical Innovation Grants
Grant funds for the 2024-2025 cycle have been exhausted.
To help support a culture of pedagogical innovation, the Office of the Provost offers Thrive grants to UVA and UVA Wise instructors who wish to innovate their undergraduate courses. The call for proposals is typically announced in early July for innovations to be implemented in the upcoming academic year.
Pedagogical innovation is defined broadly as adaptations of commonly employed teaching practices or activities or distinctly new, creative ones. All proposed innovations centered on undergraduate courses will be considered. Innovations can be localized at the individual instructor-level, within a program, or across the institution. Innovations can be new or novel to the respective instructor or program even if not to the larger pedagogical community: innovation with a lower-case "i." They also can be uniquely new or novel in broader higher education contexts: innovation with an upper-case "I." Innovations may or may not involve technology.
All innovations must have clear potential to increase one or more of the following intended outcomes: educational equity, student retention or persistence, sense of belonging, learning or engagement, or instructor engagement or efficiency. (Read more about each intended outcome in the Definitions section.)
While innovations involving generative artificial intelligence (AI) are encouraged, proposals centered on this topic should address how students’ privacy and academic work will be protected and describe how equitable access to the tools will be ensured.
Definitions
The following definitions are intended to help characterize pedagogical innovations. During the application process, applicants will be asked to self-identify outcomes and impact anticipated from the proposed grant activities.
Educational Equity
The innovation is expected to increase educational equity in terms of access, opportunities, support, or tools. In other words, the innovation better ensures every student, regardless of their background, language, race, economic profile, gender, learning capability, disability or family history, receive the support and resources they need to achieve their educational goals.
Student Retention or Resistance
The innovation is expected to increase student retention, persistence, and/or completion rates and/or decrease drop, withdrawal, or failure (DWF) rates, especially but not exclusively for traditionally underserved or minoritized students, including Black and Indigenous students and other students of color, students with disabilities, LGBTQIA+ students, and first-generation college students.
Student Sense of Belonging
The innovation is expected to increase students' sense of belonging at UVA, in their major, or in their courses. Sense of belonging in a college setting "refers to students' perceived social support on campus, a feeling or sensation of connectedness, the experience of mattering or feeling cared about, accepted, respected, valued by, and important to the group or others on campus."*
*Strayhorn, T. L. (2019). College students' sense of belonging: A key to educational success for all students (2nd ed). New York: Taylor & Francis.
Student Learning
The innovation is expected to increase students' cognitive, procedural, affective, metacognitive, or meta-emotional awareness, abilities, or skills.
Student Engagement
The innovation is expected to increase students' behavioral, emotional, or cognitive engagement in the learning process. Engagement is "characterized by curiosity, participation, and the drive to learn more."*
*Abla, C., & Fraumeni, B. R. (2019). Student engagement: Evidence-based strategies to boost academic and social-emotional results. McREL International.
Instructor Engagement
The innovation is expected to increase instructors' behavioral, emotional, or cognitive engagement in the teaching process.
Instructor Efficiency
The innovation is expected to increase instructors' efficiency, either in the short or long term, related to the design of instructional materials or activities, assessment of student learning, grading of learning artifacts, communication with students or the support of their learning while retaining quality.
Eligibility
All academic general faculty, tenure-eligible and tenured faculty, and permanent administrative staff who regularly teach undergraduate courses at UVA and UVA Wise may apply.
Funds are limited. Instructors may only submit one proposal per academic year. Except when Experiments or Small Pilots are scaled up (see Funding Details), instructors may not submit proposals for the same project more than once. Projects funded through the A&S Learning Design & Technology team's Learning Technology Incubator (LTi) program are not eligible for Thrive grant funding.
Funding Details
Projects can be completed in Fall 2024, Spring 2025, and/or Summer 2025. Instructors may apply for funding at three levels:
- Experiments: This grant-level allows individual faculty to innovate at the course-level and request up to $2,000; no assessment plan needed and minimal reporting requirements.
- Small Pilots: This grant-level allows 2-4 faculty to innovate at the course- or program-level and request up to $10,000; moderate assessment and reporting requirements.
- Large Pilots: This grant-level allows multiple faculty to scale up efficacious innovations at the program-level and request up to $20,000; substantial assessment and reporting requirements.
Funds might pay for faculty or staff wages;* graduate student wages, or student wages when employed as undergraduate learning, teaching or research assistants, or course design partners; course materials, activities, or other course-related experiences; necessary learning technologies; or other project-related costs that fall within normal procurement guidelines for state funds. While grant funds may help cover related professional development expenses, they should be used to extend UVA Education Benefits, not replace them.
All grant funds must be spent by May 1, 2025. All unspent funds will be returned to the Office of the Provost.
*Faculty may use grant funds for summer salary only; faculty overload pay is not allowed. When any wages are requested, proposals should make clear how dedicated instructor or student time will advance the innovation project. Include appropriate academic fringe rates when developing your budget.
Reporting
At the end of the grant period, all recipients are required to submit a summary of grant activities to the Center for Teaching Excellence. Recipients of Small and Large Pilots are also required to submit detailed summaries of assessment efforts and findings. A template will be provided.
Dissemination of results of Thrive grant projects is encouraged, and the CTE’s Innovations in Pedagogy Summit is one potential outlet.
Proposal
The application consists of multiple parts and varies whether applying for an Experiment, Small Pilot, or Large Pilot grant. All three levels require grant, applicant, and course details; disclosure of prior Thrive grants; a brief description of the proposed innovation; characterization of anticipated impact and risks of the innovation; and a budget summary.
In addition, Small Pilots and Large Pilots require a detailed line-item budget and justifications and detailed assessment plans. The level of detail and sophistication of the assessment plan should scale with the scope of the project.
CTE faculty are available to consult about project ideas and assessment plans. For applicants interested in formally assessing their projects, the CTE’s SoTL Scholars program may be of interest.
To apply, download the application template, complete all relevant parts, and save as a PDF. Use the following naming convention: yyyy_mm-lastname_of_primary_ applicant-proposal (e.g., 2022_08-jones-proposal). Email completed applications to thrive@virginia.edu. Applications will be accepted and reviewed on a rolling basis until all grant funds are exhausted.
We encourage you to read through our FAQs page for answers to common questions and email us at thrive@virginia.edu for additional help.
Thrive Grants Application
List of the program's most commonly asked questions.
List of grant recipients from 2023 onward.
List of grant recipients from 2019 to 2020.
Learn more about our special call for faculty interested in incorporating AI instruction into a 2025-2026 course.