Money is available to help MTSU faculty infuse the experiences and perspectives of women into the college curricula, thanks to the President’s Commission on the Status of Women’s annual Curriculum Integration Grants.

Monday, March 14, is the deadline to apply for two $2,700 grants from the organization for the 2016-17 academic year.

Successful proposals should demonstrate a commitment to innovative teaching techniques as well as careful consideration of the intersection of women’s concerns with notions of race/ethnicity, class and sexual orientation.

Grants may be used to revise a course, revise a general education course for a study-abroad program, create a new course, reconceptualize a current minor or create a new minor.

Reviewers will give priority to courses that are developed or revised for undergraduates or can be implemented within two years, organizers said. Proposals that encourage greater student understanding of violence against women are especially encouraged.

The most recent grant winner, associate professor of media studies Katie Foss, created an upper-level seminar course called “Crime and Gender in Media.”

Foss’s fall 2016 semester course will focus on the impact and media coverage of the Campus Sexual Violence Elimination Act, consider disparities in crime reporting and explore how phones and personal technology are and have been used for crimes against women and other groups.

Members of the Academic Issues Subcommittee of the President’s Commission on the Status of Women will review each grant proposal. Courses that can be developed or revised for undergraduates and implemented within two years will receive priority consideration.

Foss will have her students analyze news, movies, television, music, video games and other media. A group project will require her students to choose an existing negative fictional portrayal related to crime and gender and rewrite the story in a way that challenges conventional stereotypes.

Grant recipients must present their completed projects to the President’s Commission on the Status of Women and in one other forum.

Only faculty members who have not received a Curriculum Integration Grant in the past four years can apply for the Curriculum Integration Grants.

For more details, visit www.mtsu.edu/pcsw/grants.php or contact Dr. Leah Tolbert Lyons at 615-898-5778 or leah.lyons@mtsu.edu.

— Gina K. Logue (gina.logue@mtsu.edu)