Sample Business Proposals / DOE Federal Government Grant Proposal #2

Response to State mandate for World History at all levels in public schools

We responded to recent State mandate that World History become standard part of the public school curriculum at all levels. The Department of History in the School of Liberal Arts at the University of Washington offers to sponsor year long seminar devoted to faculty high school and middle school teachers. The aim of this effort is to update the teachers on new trends in the field of history involve them in digital innovations providing virtual fields trips and identify new resources to help them expand on the teaching of history at all levels.

A second intent is to expand dialogues among professionals in history on the discussion of curriculum revisions teaching techniques and computer assisted instructional technologies used in the course of history. This effort is made to complement not replace existing programs and to offer expanded partnerships between the University and the public schools.

Expanding History in the Schools

Reason for Grant. The State required that all public schools include World History at all levels. The Department of History at the local university created enrichment seminars for faculty and teachers to meet this mandate. This Humanities Focus Grant application responds to recent State mandate that all public schools enhance and expand the teaching of World History to all levels.

The grant application represents our response by designing year long seminar to provide instructional support and identify enhanced history materials for faculty and teachers in our State public school system. In response to the State mandate that World History be made part of the standard curriculum in public school at all levels the Department of History at the University of Washington offered to sponsor year long seminar for faculty and teachers. The seminar will be offered to the teachers and faculty in the Seattle Public Schools and will focus on the topic of World History Trends.

The goal of the seminar is to offer opportunities for dialogue and partnership among faculty and teachers in history. The dialogues will focus on the recent trends in research in the area of world history; revisions of the view of regional histories; the ways in which the University’s world history program has analyzed the latest developments in world history and translated it into undergraduate curriculum; and the methodologies through which the lessons learned at this level have implications for instruction in the public schools. Thus the seminar will begin with discussion of scholarship and research and move to consideration of strategies for translating scholarship into curriculum.

The seminar will complement the current efforts of the School's outreach program History For All and expand its reach into history and social science classrooms. It also parallels the efforts of the campus's Center for Partnerships CFP to establish collaborative efforts with Seattle public school teachers so that students in this overwhelmingly immigrant dominated school district are better equipped with the skills that they will need to be eligible for admission to college in general and the University of Washington particular. The University of Washington has well established program of outreach to Seattle public schools already in place.

However the funding for the initiative outlined here is not available from local sources alone. The project activities will include. A two semester series of seminars with high school teachers and History Faculty three sessions per semester to discuss recent research in key areas of World History and strategies for disseminating research into curriculum.

Development of History For All Workshops to support teaching of World History in public schools. Development of curriculum packets to complement History For All workshops. Instructional Technology seminars are offered to help teachers relate to and use the latest techniques in online education.

Funding Request

Anticipated Institutional Matching Funds. Services in kind and $21,493.

Goals and Objectives

The purpose of the Expanding History in the Schools program is to provide opportunities for public school teachers and University faculty in the humanities to collaborate on meeting the new State mandate to offer World History at all levels. Develop new training and orientation program for middle and high school teachers and faculty that incorporates new trends and research in World History. Recruit middle and high school teachers to participate in year long series of seminars directed at upgrading their skills and competencies in World History.

Organize collaborative orientation program for teachers and faculty prior to the summer semester at the University. Hire outside evaluator to orchestrate pre and post testing of teachers and faculty in conjunction with program planning and launch. Attract high quality University faculty to participate in the program and provide the curriculum for the teachers.

Recruit orient and assign key University faculty to the project prior to teachers coming on site for seminars. Review with University faculty the content methodologies and instructional technologies required to assist teachers complete the seminar. Develop series of seminars to support teaching of World History and strategies for translating research into new curriculum for public schools.

Develop curriculum packets podcasts and interactive programming for use outside of the University seminars with collaborating partners.

The Project Design

Our year long seminar programs will follow the academic calendar of the University of Washington. Full description of workshop topics are offered in Appendix A. Curriculum vitae for the seminar leaders are attached in Appendix B.

We project three meetings quarter focusing respectively on Fall Quarter. The first session will focus on the question "What is World History. And will be followed by two sessions on "South America in the World.

Partnerships

The Center for Partnerships CFP at the University of Washington operates broad based outreach program to 12 classrooms in Seattle area. The program includes language arts mathematics biological sciences; the arts; computer science and advanced placement courses that help students perform and meet State standards especially in the humanities. The History For All program that receives major funding and in kind services from the University’s CFP.

CFP fully supports the World History seminar and has agreed to provide financial support use of facilities and transportation fees that are linked to waivers for graduate students assigned to the project and teachers in the program. NEH Focus Grant Proposal funds to will be used to support editorial work and web site development used to produce the curricular modules that are produced during the workshops. CFP will also work closely with the Department of History and History For All to recruit teacher participants in the project from the Seattle Public Schools and Redmond Schools. We will also work with Faith Based Schools in the areas.

Representatives of several schools and the public schools administrators will meet as Task Force governing all work. Through this network CFP will provide institutional support to ensure that we recruit representative group of high school and middle school teachers. Seminar leaders will be responsible for developing course content testing students and providing feedback from dialogues for the overall program evaluation.

The contact person will be your main contact point to the project development team. All decisions must be cleared through the team contact person and project manager. Subordinate team members should not be contacted directly unless cleared by the team leader.

Evaluation

We plan to contract an outside consultant to evaluate and provide objective input for the final reports to school executives. It will be the responsibility of the evaluator to prepare pre seminar questionnaires; seminar evaluation forms and help set measures for performance with Department of History personnel involved in the project. Because there is partnership arrangement between the University and the schools we envision collaborative effort at defining measures of performance for teachers and feedback tools. Second intent is to reach students at the middle school high school and undergraduate levels for feedback on the performance of our teachers.

We will seek to measure the following.

We also anticipate using measures for assessment that emerge from the dialogues with teachers that take place in our seminars. Because the History Department has only limited experience with this type of outreach initiative we will use the expertise of the consultant and the State Department of Education officials who are partnering with us in this program.

Dissemination

In order to ensure the diffusion of the innovations developed during our seminars with teachers and faculty we plan to develop curricular packets podcasts and online multimedia presentations of the archived work accomplished at the seminars. The curricular packets will provide models of the ideas and results that come from the completed seminars. We also plan to make available the documentation on the World History seminars. Our newly created website will serve as an update source and resource moving forward for all teachers in the area involved with the World History.

We have added graduate intern during the summer to provide editorial assistance during the project to ensure that curricular packets and presentations are prepared and ready for dissemination at the close of the phase program. The future objectives tied to dissemination include.

Ensuring teacher and faculty dialogues continue after the seminars through online contacts and website resources as well as joint planning for updates;

Expansion of the programming beyond the initial grades of the grant and moving forward to affect changes in other curriculum modules related to History by collaborating with teachers in the arts music science and;

We plan to use our seminar experience to advance to larger regional and national program. This will be accomplished by attracting other partners and funding sources for the continuing upgrade of teacher and faculty skills and competencies in this area. Collaborating with the instructional technology program at the University to continue the exploration of new teaching methodologies use of advanced communications and information technology and adaptation of current innovations already in use by students e.g. instant messaging podcasts etc.

NEH Collaborative Research Fellowship Proposed Budget

NEH has numerous budget forms see www.neh.gov. Fellowship awards will be based in part on applicant budget requests. Please provide the best available estimates for specific costs below. In the first line list yourself and salary stipend costs for time devoted to research.

In additional space please list any other support staff you require. List all travel including international flights and research related trips in the NIS.

Topics Covered in the Expanding History in the Schools

The year long seminar program will use the academic calendar of the University of Washington. The seminar topics are listed below. Fall Quarter.

Exploring World History. This includes sessions defining world history exploration of the various schools of thought regarding its composition appropriate periods trends controversies changes in the sequencing of history. Topics include.

What is World History The Components of World History by Region Continents and the Approaches to Understanding their Development. Winter Quarter. Latin America and Its Interaction with the World.

Topics include. What is Latin America. What are the different approaches to teaching its history. What are the schools of thought on the sequence controversies traditional and emerging approaches to teaching the history of Latin America in the global context.

Spring Quarter. What is Europe’s Role in World History. Topics include the rise of the "Isms" nationalism imperialism capitalism communism.

What is the Multi Racial Context of Europe. pre 1945; post 1945. What was the Cold War and how did it change global politics. What is the current state of global history.

Appendix – Curriculum Vitae

Curriculum Vitae of the Faculty of the Program. Sample Instructions. The principal investigator on the project is Professor complete description of the professor’s background e.g. degree schools areas of specialization. Publications conferences articles and statements regarding their relevance to the project should also be listed.

The project manager trainers evaluator and task force members involved in this project should be listed appropriately following the above guidelines or those guidelines provided by the school or organization to which you belong.

Appendix – Letters of Endorsement

This is generic appendix page. Use the generic appendix templates when you have additional appendix material to attach to your proposal and there is not an existing Proposal Pack template to match your content. In reference to NEH proposals this space would usually apply to Letters of Endorsement and listing of those individuals and organization in support of the proposal.

This template was not required for the final proposal submitted to the government agency so it was not filled in. It is included in the sample as an optional template the proposal writer could have added. The final proposal submitted to the agency deleted this page from the framework.

Appendix – Sample Curricular Materials

This is generic appendix page. Use the generic appendix templates when you have additional appendix material to attach to your proposal and there is not an existing Proposal Pack template to match your content. In reference to this NEH sample it is suggested that this space be allotted to information about the program materials or outputs expected as result of the activities of the program samples that may be included are.

Descriptions of curricular materials prepared or resulting from the research;

Actual examples of projected types of work that participants will be involved with e.g. questionnaires tests administrative tools;

Examples of instructional material planned for use in the project. This template was not required for the final proposal submitted to the government agency so it was not filled in. It is included in the sample as an optional template the proposal writer could have added. The final proposal submitted to the agency deleted this page from the framework.