The Kenyon Keys Teaching Grants, which are supported by the President’s Innovation Fund, have been designed to promote cross-disciplinary teaching and learning that help students think more critically and creatively about the six Kenyon Keys: Data & Technology, Democracy & Publics, Global & Local, Health & Community, Making & Knowing, Sustainability & Society. The grants can be used for additional teaching support, purchase of materials, organizing workshops, and more. We welcome a range of proposals, though preference will be given to the development of cross-disciplinary courses that are team-taught or collaboratively designed.

There are several tiers of funding available for course development support based on the scope of the collaboration:

  • Key Courses. Up to 12 grants of $300 each are available for designing a new course that explicitly offers students a chance to learn about one or more of the six Keys and reflect on it from a disciplinary or interdisciplinary perspective. The course should be widely open to students across campus with few or no prerequisites. If we receive more applications than we can support, preference will be given to applications that invite students to think of a course from a new disciplinary perspective (such as Data & Technology in the Humanities, Health & Community in the Fine Arts, and so on).

  • Cross-disciplinary Courses. Up to six grants of $1,000 each encourage team-taught courses taught by faculty in two departments or divisions or co-taught by faculty from a department and staff from one of the centers and institutes on campus. The Cross-disciplinary Courses grants facilitate the design of new courses, development of innovative assignments, and purchase of materials to enhance pedagogy. The course should be widely open to students across campus with few or no prerequisites.

  • Keys Teaching Initiatives. These large initiatives center on collaborative module design or course design across 5-7 courses at the 100-level focusing on a Key. Each Key Teaching Initiative offers six grants of up to $3,000, which provides material support for 5-7 faculty to share ideas and resources and work together to develop courses. 

To Apply

Applications for the PIF Teaching Grants should include the following documents:

  • Proposal (1-2 pages, single-spaced). The proposal provides a tentative description of the course(s), its aims and objectives, and how it thematizes a particular Key. Based on the grant for which one is applying, the following information should also be added:

    Keys Courses: A description of any enrollment restrictions for the proposed course;

    Cross-disciplinary Courses: A discussion of whether the course will be double-listed or taught as an INDS course. If there is additional support that the collaborators anticipate needing, please specify that in the document.

    Keys Teaching Initiatives: You do not need to have identified any or all of your collaborators before submitting a proposal. However, if the course idea could fit more than one Key, please indicate it.

  • CEL or Experiential Learning. If the proposed course engages with the community in some form or otherwise includes components that offer students hands-on experience outside the classroom, please describe that in detail.

  • Budget. Describe as closely as possible any projected expenses that the grant money can help support, including the organisation of workshops and colloquia, organising course trips with students, purchase of course texts or other materials, and stipend for course development.

The deadline for applications is Monday, November 9, 2026, to give grant awardees sufficient time to meet with collaborators, add the course to the following year’s schedule and submit a course proposal to CPC.