APPLICATIONS CLOSED

Thank you to the many individuals and teams across BU who applied for the fall 2025 Shipley Academic Innovation Fund. The window for applying is now closed. Please check back in spring 2026 for future funding opportunities.

The Shipley Academic Innovation Fund is designed to catalyze innovative approaches to teaching and learning, aligned with the university’s strategic priorities. Funding is available for projects that explore new instructional models, integrate emerging technologies, promote inclusive teaching practices, and create high-impact learning experiences for students.

A group of software engineering students gather around a computer.

Our Goals

  • To foster excellence at scale – harnessing the work of faculty across BU and advancing that work in ways that drive meaningful impact for students.
  • To promote and steer innovations in teaching and learning that catalyze advancements in practice and in the field.
  • To facilitate the development of cross-campus strategies and plans that build on the intellectual power and experiences among our faculty to enhance the student experience.
  • To promote foundational skills that support life-enriching opportunities for students.
  • To elevate BU’s reputation as a thought-leader in teaching excellence.

Elevating Impact

Generally our programs will advocate and seek out initiatives in several thematic areas including those that focus on the ability to:

  • Deliver education that allows learners to participate and gain experience from an interdisciplinary and global perspective.
  • Innovate and transform curriculum to drive student success for individuals of all backgrounds.
  • Engage in action-based, innovative approaches that provide opportunities for meaningful career, internship and lifelong learning experiences.
  • Advance teaching and learning in the AI era and through applications that engender meaningful high impact learning experiences, including at the curricular level and across the university.
  • Leverage the interdependence of the faculty and student experience.

In a library, a young woman is studying with a laptop open in front of her. An AI graphic appears above the computer.

In fall 2025, Shipley Center, which is part of the Institute for Excellence in Teaching & Learning, accepted proposals for enhancing curricula through creative applications of Generative AI (GenAI), seeking innovative ideas that explore new ways of teaching, learning, and assessment using GenAI tools and approaches.