Funding Opportunities Across UBC

Below is a summary of UBC funding competitions that can be used to support teaching and learning projects. If you want to talk about your ideas, learn more about the different funds, identify funding opportunities for your project ideas, and/or want feedback on your application, please contact Ashley Welsh, Faculty Liaison (ashley.welsh@ubc.ca).

Fund Overview Eligibility Fund Amount Application Deadline
Large Teaching & Learning Enhancement Fund

The Large TLEF is intended to advance UBC’s strategic goals related to transformative learning. Large TLEF projects typically aspire to impact multiple courses or programs across UBC-V.

Principal Applicant: UBC-V faculty and staff

Co-applicants: UBC-V faculty, students, staff, and community members

Up to $200,000 for
1–3 years

Letter of Intent: Mid-July

Full Proposal: Mid-October

Small Teaching & Learning Enhancement Fund

The Small TLEF is intended for grassroots projects that support experimentation with pedagogical approaches with strong potential to enhance the learner experience. Projects are typically smaller in scope and scale than Large TLEF projects.

Principal Applicant: UBC-V faculty, students and staff

Co-applicants: UBC-V faculty, students, staff, and community members.

Note: if the Principal Applicant is a student, the application must be supported by a co-applicant who is a faculty member.

Up to $50,000 for
1–3 years
Mid-November
Strategic Equity & Anti-Racism (StEAR) Enhancement Fund The StEAR Enhancement Fund is designed to support community-led initiatives that advance broad campus equity and anti-racism goals and priorities aligned with UBC’s StEAR Framework and Roadmap for Change.  UBC-V and UBC-O faculty, staff, and student groups affiliated with the Alma Matter Society, the Graduate Student Society, Students' Union Okanagan of UBC, a Faculty or School, or another officially-recognized UBC organization. 

Up to $300,000 is available for the September 2023 to August 2024 academic year. 

Applicants can apply for funds from $500 and up to $10,000 per project.

Starting September 13th, applications will be reviewed on a rolling basis every six to eight weeks until August 2024 or until the funds run out.
Open Education Resources (OER) Fund Affordability Grants

Funding and staff support to UBC-V faculty who wish to incorporate open educational resources as required materials into their UBC-V undergraduate credit courses.

Principal Applicant: UBC-V faculty

Co-applicants: UBC-V faculty, students, staff, and community members

Up to $25,000 for
1 year
Mid-January
Open Education Resources (OER) Rapid Innovation Grants

Funding for a wide range of activities and events that seek to engage the UBC community in increasing awareness and capacity for supporting and sustaining the adoption, adaption, and creation of OER at UBC-V.

UBC-V faculty, students and staff Up to $2,000 for
1 year
Rolling until funds depleted ($24,000 allocated each year)
Students as Partners in Course Design Grant

Funding for furthering student-faculty partnerships in course redesign. The grants support UBC Vancouver undergraduate students working in partnerships with faculty to redesign UBC-V undergraduate courses in making significant revisions to course content, student interactions and/or student assessment.

UBC-V faculty and students work in partnership and apply as co-applicants; for undergraduate credit courses only. Up to $7,100 for 1 year

Twice a year: February and June 

 

Scholarship of Teaching & Learning (SoTL) Seed

The SoTL Seed Program provides graduate research assistants, collegial collaborations, and complementary funding for projects, for faculty interested in exploring and understanding the impact of their pedagogical choices.

All members of the UBC-V community. Priority given to faculty who teach at the undergraduate level.

Up to 70 hours of GRA support plus some discretionary funds to cover research and dissemination costs

Duration for 1–2 years

Twice a year: Late Spring and Late Fall

 

Scholarship of Teaching & Learning (SoTL) Dissemination Fund The fund supports disseminations and publications that describe research on teaching and learning in higher education with direct implications for UBC. Any full-time faculty member at UBC-V. Funds can be received by individual faculty every 24 months.

Up to $1,000 for conference costs

Up to $2,000 for journal publication costs

Duration for 1 year. Can be received every 24 months

Rolling until funds deplete, $20,000 per year x 3
Scholarship of Teaching and Learning (SoTL) Linkage Grants The Scholarship of Teaching and Learning (SoTL) Linkage Grants have been established to enable the synthesis, exploration and high-impact dissemination of interdisciplinary SoTL research. This pilot funding program supports the formation of interdisciplinary teams of SoTL researchers inquiring into fundamental questions in higher education that benefit from investigation in multiple pedagogical and curricular contexts.

One faculty member will serve as project lead, but at least two other co-applicants from different disciplines and/or units must be included in the proposal.

The lead applicant must be a UBC Vancouver tenure-track faculty member (research or educational leadership). 

Up to $25,000 per proposal. Duration up to 2 years. 

Spring 2024

Sustainability Education Fellows Program Sustainability Education Fellowships are awarded to UBC Vancouver faculty members who are leading the design of new sustainability courses and programs. The associated funding looks to advance and diversify sustainability and wellbeing education opportunities for students across campus in all disciplines. As part of the program, fellows meet monthly to share and explore teaching and learning practices and ideas, share their progress on their curriculum projects, and collaborate to advance sustainability education on campus. UBC Vancouver faculty members who are leading the design of new sustainability courses and programs. Typically, teams are made up of two faculty members from different departments, faculties or disciplines, but more than two is also acceptable. Up to $20,000 over two years to support curriculum development projects Late Spring 2024
Climate and Wellbeing Education Grants The Climate and Wellbeing Education Grant program aims to improve the depth and delivery of climate change content in existing courses, bolstering topics such as climate adaptation and resilience, climate justice, climate science, climate economics, climate law, planning and policy, complex systems thinking, and the nexus between climate and human health and wellbeing. All areas of inquiry related to climate change and teaching are eligible. UBC faculty looking to update, enhance or revise an existing undergraduate or graduate course, with climate change and climate wellbeing content and pedagogy. Up to $6,000 for one year Application deadline: June 12, 2023
Indigenous Strategic Initiatives (ISI) Fund, Stream 1: Innovative Projects Innovative projects that advance UBC’s Indigenous Strategic Plan priority and will have an impact at the department, unit or Faculty level with the potential to scale beyond the unit in the future.

Applicant: UBC-V and UBC-O faculty, staff and post-docs

Sign-off: must be approved / signed-off by the Department Head / Dean

Up to $100,000 for
1–2 years

LOI deadline: Mid-January

Full application deadline: Mid-April

Indigenous Strategic Initiatives (ISI) Fund, Stream 2: Transformative Projects Transformative projects that aim to change policies, structures or systems at UBC and will have the potential for wide-scale impact at the Faculty, portfolio or institutional level.

Applicant: UBC-V and UBC-O faculty, staff and post-docs

Sign-off: must be approved / signed-off by the Department Head / Dean

Up to $250,000 for
1–3 years

LOI deadline: Mid-January

Full application deadline: Mid-April

Indigenous Strategic Initiatives (ISI) Fund, Stream 3: Student-led Projects Student-led initiatives that address any of the ISP Actions and have impact at any level, including unit, Faculty, department, institution or other.

Applicant: UBC-V and UBC-O undergraduate or graduate student(s)

Co-applicant: must be supported and signed by a co-applicant who is a faculty or staff member.

Up to $50,000 for
12–18 months
Mid-January
Universal Design for Learning Fellows Program The UDL Fellows Program will support faculty and staff to develop expertise in UDL through a cohort-based professional development program. It will be comprised of a series of facilitated workshops, online modules, and a project-focused set of activities to help participants use UDL principles to redesign their courses to be more inclusive and accessible.

Each Faculty will be asked to nominate a project team with a description of the course being proposed for a UDL redesign. Nominations for the Program will be made by the Associate Deans Academic.

Each project team should include a UBC-V instructor and a support staff member.

Up to $10,000 in funding per department to support faculty who participate in the program

Interested teams from the Faculty of Science should submit a letter of interest on or before December 1, 2023. 

More information about the Faculty of Science nomination process can be found here.