Course Development Grants

Summer 2026 - Call for Proposals: Course Development Grants

Colorado College was recently awarded a Mellon Foundation Humanities for All Times grant for Generative Futures: Critical Language Inquiry in the Age of Artificial Intelligence, a three-year initiative that centers Critical Language Inquiry (CLI) and Critical AI Literacy (CAIL) as two interconnected approaches to explore language as a site of complexity, multiplicity, and power.  

This Summer 2026 development call invites proposals from faculty interested in creating a new course or significantly revising an existing course that engages critically with the larger themes of the grant. 

Courses may focus on Critical Language Inquiry (CLI) and language explicitly—through languages in the plural and language study, multilingualism, literature, film, performance, music, visual culture, translation, or related modes or genres—or foreground discipline-specific languages and forms of inquiry. Such courses might help students understand how language is socially constructed, heterogeneous, and shaped by diverse histories, communities, and forms of expression. They might also ask how language creates and negotiates knowledge, identity, norms, and values, and how it can both reinforce systems of exclusion and open possibilities for resistance, solidarity, and belonging. 

Courses may also engage Artificial Intelligence as an object of humanistic inquiry, with an emphasis on critical analysis and developing Critical AI Literacy (CAIL). Such courses might help students ask how generative AI systems shape the production, interpretation, and circulation of language, and how issues of bias, inequality, labor, and environmental impact are embedded in their development and use. CAIL also invites reflection on how these systems influence human thinking and knowledge creation, helping learners engage AI with discernment, responsibility, and an awareness of its broader social consequences. 

Successful proposals will receive $4000 (new course) or $2000 (revised course) in development support. Proposals are due Friday, June 15, 2026. Submit your proposal here.

Purpose of the Course Development Grants

Courses supported through this grant should help students engage with one or more of the following goals:  

• Examine language(s) as a site of complexity, multiplicity, and power. 

• Ask how language—including but not limited to discipline-specific language—creates and negotiates knowledge, identity, norms, and values. 

• Engage with questions of language hierarchies, centers and peripheries, and linguistic biases. 

• Use humanistic methods to critically examine questions relating to GenAI, technology, language, knowledge, and society. 

• Address questions of equity, access, social justice, and responsibility in relation to GenAI and related technologies. 

• Explore how GenAI reshapes questions of creativity, authorship, originality, collaboration, labor, and responsibility within humanistic and specific disciplinary contexts. 

• Support students in developing Critical AI Literacy. 

• Create course materials, assignments, activities, or assessment approaches that may contribute to the broader curricular and pedagogical goals of the Mellon grant.  

Eligibility

All tenure-track and returning 1-year visiting CC faculty are eligible to apply to develop either a new course, or a significant revision of an existing course. Courses should already be scheduled for the 2026-2027 academic year. Classes planned as a 2027-2028 offering will also be considered. 

For revised courses, the proposed changes should be substantial enough to merit development support. This may include major changes to course framing, learning outcomes, readings, assignments, pedagogical approach, assessment methods, AI-related policies or activities, or the integration of CLI/CAIL concepts across the block. 

Faculty who are already receiving Dean’s Office development funds may not apply for Mellon course development support for the same course. Faculty may, however, apply for Mellon support for a different course, provided the proposed work is distinct from any course already supported by other Dean’s Office development funding. 

Co-taught course proposals are welcome. In such cases, each faculty member should submit a separate application, though they may use shared language where appropriate. The course development grant would be divided between the co-instructors. 

Expectations and Distribution of Funding

Faculty who receive a course development grant in this cycle are required to participate in one of the two summer 2026 reading groups connected to the grant: Critical Language Inquiry or Critical AI Literacy. These reading groups are designed to provide shared grounding for the grant’s curricular work and to create a collaborative space in which faculty can refine course concepts, test assignments, develop shared language, and build connections across departments and programs. 

Grant recipients may also be invited to participate in additional Crown Center workshops, educator development days, course convergence opportunities, or assessment conversations related to the Mellon initiative of the duration of the project. 

Development funds will be distributed based on the following:  

For new course development ($4000 total award):  

• $1000 upon completion of summer 2026 reading group deliverables  
• $3000 upon completion of the course OR submission of all course materials  

For course revision development ($2000 total award):  

• $500 upon completion of summer 2026 reading group deliverables  
• $1500 upon completion of the course OR submission of all course materials 

Submission

Please submit proposals by June 15, 2026 using this online form. 

Questions may be directed to GenerativeFutures@ColoradoCollege.edu