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STEM Pathways Minor Grants

STEM Pathways Minors for Non-STEM Students

in April 2015, Virginia Tech approved Pathways to General Education, a new general education curriculum that guides students in integrating ways of knowing across disciplinary traditions and articulates learning outcomes relevant for the 21st century. As part of this curriculum, students can complete a portion of their general education requirements through a transdisciplinary Pathways Minor.

Although Pathways Minors must include any three core concepts, this particular call for proposals is meant to support the development of Pathways Minors that specifically include the Pathways concepts of Reasoning in the Natural Sciences and Quantitative and Computational Thinking.

Students with majors in the humanities, social sciences, and arts need minor offerings that complement their course work while also helping them meet the STEM portions of their general education requirements in thematic, interesting, and transdisciplinary ways. And with our entering classes exceeding 6000 students, more minors are needed to accommodate demand. With the support of these grants, we hope to meet this demand.

Deadline for Submission: December 1. The cycle is now CLOSED.

  1. To develop and deliver STEM-based Pathways Minors for non-STEM students.
  2. To support the incorporation of engaging pedagogies and informative assessment strategies across the Pathways curriculum.
  3. To increase the incorporation of high-impact practices such as undergraduate research, project-based learning, education abroad, and service learning (Kuh, 2008) in Pathways STEM Minors.
  4. To support STEM Pathways Minors structured around required courses that cross multiple departments and colleges.

Use the template WORD file (below) to first draft your open responses before completing the Proposal Form.

STEM Pathways Minors Grant Proposal Google Form

Once the submission is complete, you will be provided a link so you are able to go back in and edit your submission up until the deadline.

Here are supplemental documents you will need to complete your submission:

These particular Pathways Grants will support the work of a transdisciplinary team in designing STEM-based Pathways Minors to primarily serve students with non-STEM majors. These Pathways Grants will be awarded a maximum of $50,000 to be used either during this fiscal year (FY 2018-19) or over this year and next fiscal year (ending June 15 2020).

At the start, memorandums of understanding (MOU) will be created to move base funding to the requesting units. The MOU will detail expectations of the Minor development, course offerings, and commitments of the grantees. It will need to be clear in the proposal how the funded departments plan to continue the work beyond this seed grant funding.

Awardees must commit to the following:

  • Participation in the Pathways Summer Institute
  • Participation in Pathways Grantees Cohort (five 1-hr meetings per semester, 10 meetings total)
  • Submission of a brief report by May 1 following each year of funding

Please email Stephen Biscotte with any questions.