Office of Academic Enrichment
Honors and Scholars Center

Honors Course Development Grant Application Process

Application Process

To apply for a community-engaged course development grant, you must submit a complete proposal via our Qualtrics form. A few notes: 

  1. Applications should be assembled as a single PDF document. Please do not submit multiple file attachments. If you do not follow submission guidelines, your proposal will not be evaluated. 
  1. Use the checklist on the Application Form to ensure that you are providing all requested documentation.  Incomplete proposals will not be evaluated, so please ensure that you provide everything as requested. 
  1. Read the extended descriptions of the sections of the Application Form. These descriptions are available in the sections below. 
  1. Ensure your availability for the Course Design Institute. All grantees will attend an online Honors Course Development Institute in Jan/Feb. Exact dates and times will be coordinated with the grantee cohort. Participation in the majority of the CDI by at least one course developer is required. We will work around your work commitments as much as possible, but if you know you are unable to commit to approximately 20 hours of synchronous online time over the course of 5-8 weeks, please do not apply. 
  1. Contact Teresa Johnson at johnson.674@osu.edu if you have any questions. I am here to provide any needed support through your grant application process. I would be happy to discuss your proposal with you and provide feedback. I can also help with technical details, such as the submission process. If you need assistance or have questions, please do not hesitate to ask! 
     

Course Description 

General description of the course such as title, objectives, and target audience.

  • Course number (if applicable), faculty/instructor contact.
  • What are the title, objectives, and content of the proposed credit-bearing undergraduate course?
  • What Honors students would this course target for enrollment? (e.g. GE, 1st-year, 3-4th year, particular major).
  • How do you envision providing an Honorific experience to these students?
  • Attach a draft/tentative course syllabus (only if you’ve already taught this course as a non-Honors course, or an Honors embedded course (E) that you want to redesign for designated Honors (H) – otherwise please skip this step. 
     

Honorific Experience

How do you envision providing an Honorific experience that develop academic capacities that may be transposed to other courses and contexts throughout a student’s academic career. How will the course…

  • provide high-level content with the objective of higher-order thinking in comparison to a non-Honors course?
  • include principles and characteristics of high-impact practices?
  • ask students to connect their learning in the course to other topics within the discipline and beyond?
  • augment student communication skills using modalities that are inclusive relative to the intended audience?
  • allow students to demonstrate intellectual, interpersonal, and cognitive skills?
  • promote the connection of learning in a course to skill development, personal development, and career development?
     

Assessment 

Provide a short description of a planned assessment strategy for this course. This strategy should include the following details: 

  • How will you know if your course is successful? Include information about specific goals and metrics.
  • Are students involved in the assessment? Do they supply data, or participate in instrumentation?
  • Future plans: How will data be used once it is compiled and analyzed? (for improvement, publications, etc.)
  • Any other supporting information, including previous research or academic theory that supports your evaluation question and assessment plans. 
     

Sustainability

Describe plans for sustainability and departmental support on a continuing basis. You should consider things like:

  • Are enough students interested in this topic to create an entire course?
  • Will my chair and department support offering this small class section regularly?

 

Grant Proposal FAQs 

My course doesn’t have a course number/name/syllabus yet. Can I still apply? 

Yes. We realize that if you are in the process of developing a course, you may not have completed these steps. While we would prefer to have drafts to evaluate your proposal, if you cannot provide them, just be sure to include any information that we could use to evaluate your course content. If you are not sure what to provide, contact johnson.674@osu.edu for technical support.

I want my course to be included in the new General Education curriculum.  Where can I find the Expected Learning Outcomes I need to include? 

ELOs for courses in the new GE can be found in documentation from the Office of Academic Affairs here and here.   

I am already signed up to attend a Course Design Institute in the near future. Must I attend this one?

Yes. The course development institute for our grantees will have material that is specific to Honors course development and assessment. Please be aware that we will use an RSVP tool to schedule around time conflicts, and we will make every effort to work with you to ensure that you are able to attend. If you have little to no availability to attend a 20-25 hour CDI in January/February 2026, please do not apply. Otherwise, please apply and let us know about possible schedule conflicts along with your proposal. 


 

Application