Committee on Educational Research & Development
Support for Experimental Courses

The ER&D Committee encourages applications for the support of experimental and innovative courses. Experimental courses should be innovative in terms of subject matter or pedagogy, or both. They should fall outside of departmental offerings, but may support new interdisciplinary programs or represent emerging areas of study. The categories of courses that qualify as "experimental" include but are not limited to:

  • courses that are interdisciplinary or cross-cultural
  • courses reflective of newly emerging fields of inquiry (for example, mathematical biology, or media arts)
  • topical courses occasioned by recent developments (for example, Hurricane Katrina, or the genocide in Darfur)
  • courses that are team-taught, involving faculty from different departments, faculty within the same department who are located in different sub-disciplines, or a Wellesley faculty member and faculty member from another institution
  • single instructor courses involving other faculty as consultants or guest lecturers
  • single instructor courses that do not fit naturally into a single department
  • unconventional approaches to teaching conventional subject matter

Support:

Amount and Use of Funding: Each faculty member may apply for up to $7,500 per course for funds to support the development and implementation of an experimental course. Such support may include (but is not limited to) funds for films, guest lecturers, planning meetings, a student research assistant, field trips, teaching materials, etc. Requests must contain a clear rationale and justification, and will be judged on a competitive basis.

Replacement Units: Released units for teaching ER&D-approved experimental courses are authorized by the dean's office. In the case of team-taught courses, the dean's office may authorize one released unit for each Wellesley faculty member co-teaching the course (up to a maximum of three units per course). The Dean's Office does not provide released units for teaching experimental courses during Wintersession. Provided that course enrollments justify offering an experimental course a second time, the Dean's Office will consider authorizing released units for a second year. If an experimental course is offered a second time, the instructors will be eligible to apply for ER&D support under the guidelines for the general grants (with a maximum award of $3000). Courses may only be listed in the College catalog as "experimental" for two years. After two years, they should be incorporated into the regular offerings of departments or programs if they have been successful.

Applications: Experimental course proposals require significant evidence of detailed planning and conceptualization as they will be judged on a competitive basis by the committee. Applications must include the following:

  • name, department, rank, years at Wellesley
  • detailed description of proposed course, with an emphasis on experimental or innovative aspects. Please indicate clearly the level of the course (e.g., 100-level, 300-level seminar, etc.)
  • list of faculty members involved in teaching the proposed course, with a precise description of their responsibilities, skeleton syllabus and/or bibliography, and list of topics, and itemized account of the budgetary support requested from ER&D.
  • a supporting e-mail or other written communication from the appropriate department or program chair indicating department or program support for course 
  • faculty members who wish to teach the experimental course a second time must submit a report evaluating the success of the course to ER&D at the conclusion of the semester in which it is first taught.

Note: instructors who have already taught an experimental course are eligible to apply to teach the course a second time; proposals must be complete, detailed, and will be judged again on a competitive basis.

Deadlines: All experimental course proposals (including those for Wintersession) must be submitted to ER&D by the November deadline in the year before the proposed course is to be taught. They should be submitted electronically to the conference ERD, with a copy of the final proposal sent to the chair of the applicant’s department or program.

Examples of recent experimental courses ER&D has funded:

  • Border Crossings: Introduction to Comparative Literature: a 100-level course with a single instructor and participation by several members of literature departments that serves as an entry point into the study of world literary history and different approaches to literature.
  • Marvels of Paris and Versailles: A team-taught 200-level course by faculty from Music, French, and Art History that examines many cultural aspects of the reign of Louis XIV, and provides a key to understanding contemporary French identity.
  • The Therapy of Antiquity: Nietzsche, Freud, and the Greeks: A team-taught 300-level course by faculty in Classical Studies and Philosophy that explores the influence of classical figures on the thinking of two important modern intellectuals.
  • Dynamic Modeling of Environmental Issues: A single-instructor 200-level course taught in Wintersession that provides a hands-on introduction to developing computer-based models for complex problems.
  • Celluloid USA: A 200-level course that contributes to the interdisciplinary major in Cinema and Media Studies, with participation from a wide range of Wellesley faculty.
  • Mathematics for the Sciences: A two-semester sequence at the 200-level, team-taught by faculty from Physics and Mathematics, including much of the material found in Mathematics classes of the same level, but with emphasis on applications in the sciences.