University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill
AC-7: Incentives for Developing Courses

The College of Arts and Sciences incentivizes faculty to teach interdisciplinary, team-taught courses. Course proposals funded for fall 2017, the first year of the program, include - "Climate and Energy Transitions," taught by Gerald Cecil (physics and astronomy) and John M Bane (marine sciences); "Geography for Future Leaders: People, the Planet and You," taught by Elizabeth Havice and Diego Rivers-Iregui (geography); and "The Lived Experience of Inequality and Public Policy" taught by Candice Watts Smith (public policy) and Gershun Avilez (english and comparative literature) The College also incentivizes interdisciplinary, co-taught First Year Seminars. To ensure breadth, the faculty must be from at least two of the College of Arts and Sciences divisions or one College Division and a Professional School. At least one faculty member must be from the natural or social sciences, and one must be from the arts or humanities. At least one of the instructors must be a full-time, tenure-track faculty member in the College of Arts and Sciences. At least three new seminars will be taught in the 2017-2018 school year and offerings will be expanded in subsequent years.

These interdisciplinary, co-taught courses come with 1) up to $10,000 course development grants to be used for summer salary, travel, equipment, materials, or software that may be necessary to create the course 2) instructional budget funds to the home departments of participating faculty for the first three times their course is required to be offered (up to $15,000 per course offering to be shared between two units.) 3) Both faculty members will receive "full teaching credit" for their co-taught course. The first year seminars must be issue oriented and advanced, covering a broad range of knowledge, and/or engaging specific issues or advanced cutting edge topics. "We hope these grants will help eliminate some of the barriers that can discourage interdisciplinary teaching," said Kevin Guskiewicz, Dean of the College of Arts and Sciences and a member of the Sustainability Advisory Committee. For example, both instructors teaching the course will get full teaching credit.