ACU Library invites applications for the 2018 Library Teaching Fellows Program, designed to support the use of its Special Collections, including rare books and archives, for teaching and learning in ACU courses. The fellowship program will be in the summer of 2018, for implementation in the 2018-19 academic year.
The Library will offer three stipends of $1,000 each (after taxes) to ACU faculty or faculty-sponsored graduate teaching assistants to develop effective teaching content and learning experiences for ACU students. Teaching Fellows must be full time ACU faculty or graduate teaching assistants.
The Library’s Special Collections include:
- more than 450 collections of 20th Century personal papers in the Center for Restoration Studies, including the papers of best-selling author Max Lucado, as well as many editors, missionaries, leaders, churches and organizations
- books in a wide variety of disciplines, including, but not limited to, music, children’s literature, railroad history, literature, politics, patristics, translations and editions of the Bible, Ethiopic texts, Texana, and 19th Century textbooks
- digital collections at digitalcommons.acu.edu including photographs, audio and print works
- ACU history and biography
Instruction using the developed lesson plan(s) should be carried out during the 2018-19 academic year. The 2018 Fellows will share their lesson plans in the library’s open-access repository and will participate in a Library-sponsored program in the spring of 2019 to discuss their students’ experiences and outcomes and to reflect on the effectiveness of using primary sources in achieving course goals.
Fellows are expected to spend no less than 20 hours in Special Collections between May 14 and August 10, 2018, doing research with the materials there and consulting with Special Collections librarians and archivists. The completed lesson plan(s) must be received by August 17, 2018, for posting on the library’s open-access repository.
Teaching strategies should include both hands-on sessions where the class visits Special Collections and the use of Special Collections’ digital collections. Fellows may identify items held in Special Collections for possible digitization, subject to copyright law, to the condition of the original item and to the library’s capacity to convert the proposed item.
Applicants should submit a vita and a 1-2 page proposal describing how they would use Special Collections materials in a course, the learning objectives they hope to achieve by doing so, and their method of evaluating whether those objectives are achieved. Graduate teaching assistants should also include a letter of support from their supervising professor explicitly allocating class time for the graduate student to teach the developed lessons.
Proposals are due to Dr. Carisse Berryhill cmb04c@acu.edu no later than April 2, 2018. Proposals will be reviewed by the Special Collections staff and recommended to the Dean of the Library, who will select the Fellows. Recipients will be notified by April 20, 2018. Please contact Dr. Berryhill with questions.
Carisse Berryhill, PhD
Associate Dean, Archives and Collections