CELT grants seeding institutional change at TMU
TMU's Centre for Excellence in Learning & Teaching (CELT) exists to enrich student experience by supporting their educators. Often known for their workshops and resources, this year the CELT is reminding TMU Faculty to apply to two important grant programs.
With the Black-Focused Pedagogy Grants (BFPG) and the Learning & Teaching Grants (LTG), CELT aims to establish TMU at the forefront of emerging pedagogies, approaches, and educational technologies.
Each new round of grant recipients are making long-term impacts on student learning by exploring new methods to improve the student learning experience, and to address equity, diversity, inclusion, accessibility and decolonization (EDIA + D) inside and outside the classroom.
Black-Focused Pedagogy Grant (BFPG) Program
The Black-Focused Pedagogy Grant (BFPG) program supports faculty-led research and innovation that centers Black scholarship, Black ways of knowing, and Black student experiences in teaching and learning at Toronto Metropolitan University.
A partnership between the CELT and the Black Scholarship Institute (BSI), the program provides funding and developmental support for projects advancing Black-focused teaching and learning across a wide range of fields, including arts, social services, law, education, communication, sciences, entrepreneurship, community, and government.
English professor Dr. Darcy Ballantyne was thrilled to get one of the inaugural grants for her project A Letter to My...: The Black Epistolary Project. She said the opportunity has opened doors for innovative research, networking, and planning for TMU student Research Assistants (RAs).
Dr. Darcy Ballantyne
Department of English, Faculty of Arts
For the project current and former students were invited to revise and contribute their own “A Letter to My…” writings, resulting in a creative showcase advancing TMU’s Black Studies Minor and fostering wider community engagement.
“The BFPG gave me and my undergraduate RA an amazing opportunity to highlight and share innovative pedagogical practices that we hope will be useful to others in Black Studies programs and beyond … Plus, the incipient and ongoing support provided by CELT/BFPG has been pivotal in crafting a project that we hope will resonate profoundly with the Black community,” Ballantyne said.
The BFPG provided resources to move Black perspectives from the margins to the center of AI and law pedagogy. I strongly encourage colleagues across disciplines to apply. This grant does more than support a project; it seeds institutional change.
Jake Okechukwu Effoduh
Lincoln Alexander School of Law
At the Lincoln Alexander School of Law, Prof. Jake Okechukwu Effoduh used the BFPG to redesign his course Critical Approaches to AI and the Law, embedding Black-focused pedagogies grounded in Critical Race Theory, Afrofuturism, and community engagement. With the granting program, he and his students have sought out leading Black AI scholars while also planning future visits to community sites, and an AI & Racial Justice Hackathon to delve into how AI systems disproportionately affect Black communities.
Effoduh notes that “[u]sing the course’s critical frameworks, over a hundred students produced 21 legislative proposals addressing algorithmic injustice in policing, immigration, healthcare, and beyond. The BFPG provided resources to move Black perspectives from the margins to the center of AI and law pedagogy. I strongly encourage colleagues across disciplines to apply. This grant does more than support a project; it seeds institutional change.”
Learning & Teaching Grant (LTG) Program
At its core, the Learning & Teaching Grants Program supports faculty by creating meaningful opportunities for innovative research. It focuses on fostering projects that are implementing evidence-informed pedagogical methods that will have a long-term impact on the undergraduate and graduate student experience.
Throughout the years in the program, many proposals have taken shape and flourished with the help of the funds, resources and other areas of support that the program offers.
Kateryna Metersky
Daphne Cockwell School of Nursing
Kateryna Metersky, professor at the Daphne Cockwell School of Nursing, highlighted how the granting program laid the foundational work to kickstart her project, An Environmental Scan and Exploration of Best Practices to Develop a New Skills Testing Model for Undergraduate Nursing Students.
Metersky aimed to reimagine how high-stakes nursing skills are evaluated to meet student EDIA needs within a rapidly growing undergraduate nursing program.
The funding enabled her and her team to work on a national environmental scan, literature review, and engagement with both students and laboratory instructors through focus groups.
“I would strongly encourage others to apply, as this grant creates valuable space to thoughtfully explore innovative solutions to pressing educational challenges as it has in our case when we wanted to maintain a strong focus on student wellbeing and patient safety,” Metersky said.
This grant has been so helpful for me to create spaces for students to get experience in teaching and learning and - most importantly - research. I get to work with students who didn't imagine themselves as researchers or doing research who now see this as a possibility.
For School of Social Work professor Renée Nichole Ferguson the LTG program allowed students to play an important part in the development of social work course content that moves from managing conflict to considering its generative possibilities.
“This grant has been so helpful for me to create spaces for students to get experience in teaching and learning and - most importantly - research. I get to work with students who didn't imagine themselves as researchers or doing research who now see this as a possibility,” Ferguson said regarding her project, Expanding Capacities for Peacebuilding in Social Work Classrooms.
Renée Nichole Ferguson
School of Social Work
Julián Zapata
Department of Languages, Literatures and Cultures
Faculty of Arts
Languages, literatures and cultures professor Julián Zapata said the LTG grant program has allowed him to build a team of talented research assistants and design Speak Your Essay: Dictation and Speech Technologies in Academia – an e-learning course that reimagines how text is produced in teaching and learning environments.
In a modern era saturated with digital technology, Zapata emphasized the importance of human connection and collaboration in academic research spaces and the role that the LTG plays.
“This kind of human-centred, applied research is essential, especially as we navigate the new challenges and opportunities of the human-AI interaction era. The grant has the potential to be truly transformative for learning and teaching, and I wholeheartedly encourage anyone with an innovative or transformative idea to apply,” Zapata said.
Social and political psychology professor Dr. Becky Choma expressed her gratitude for the grant which allowed her and her colleagues Dr. Iloradanon Efimoff, Jaiden Herkimer, Anik Obomsawin to start a project called, Embedding Indigenous Content into Psychology Courses: Designing and Distributing Micro-Modules.
The project entails micro-modules and a database to support instructors in psychology to embed Indigenous content into their courses.
“This grant has allowed us to hire Research Assistants, who have been instrumental in the rigorous development of micro-modules, and will allow us to pay Indigenous Knowledge Holders for their time and expertise. This project wouldn't be possible without these funds,” Choma said.
Submit your proposal
Interested Faculty & Contract Lecturers are encouraged to submit a proposal for the grants. Submissions will be accepted before the deadline Friday, January 23, 2026 at 4 p.m. EST, after which, successful proposals will be selected and announced.
To learn more about these funding opportunities, visit:
https://www.torontomu.ca/centre-for-excellence-in-learning-and-teaching/funding-opportunities-/
Questions regarding these grants, and the work of CELT can be emailed to askcelt@torontomu.ca.