Faculty Member Resources
As a faculty member, you devote so much of your time to the development of your students; let us help you in your journey. Our staff is here to support you in everything you do in the classroom and in your own research. Explore the resources available and take your career to the next level.
If you are hosting a conference on campus, Toronto Metropolitan University Conference and Space Reservation Services can help you secure your venue. For access to research grants and sponsorship, and for help with hosting international conferences, contact The Leaders Circle (external link, opens in new window) . For assistance with your online registration and payment system, Toronto Metropolitan University’s Financial Services Department has all the guidance and resources you need. For conference funding support from our Faculty, please see the “DRF-Conference” tab under “Dean’s Research Fund” in the dropdown menu.
The Dean’s Pedagogical Innovation (DPI) Fund supports faculty-driven ideas that align with priorities outlined in the Faculty of Engineering and Architectural Science’s (FEAS) Strategic Plan. Funding will be awarded for tangible projects that will benefit students in one of the following areas:
- Enhancements to teaching and learning excellence, as well as to student experience, engagement and success, particularly through virtual learning and virtual interactive labs.
- New teaching practices that enhance students’ analytical thinking and decision-making.
- Interactive high-school field trips, which leverage campus labs and facilities and connect faculty research with the Ontario high-school curriculum.
This year, The DPI Fund focuses on four streams as outlined below. Selected proposals will be awarded up to $20,000 to implement teaching innovation. In May 2022, funding recipients will be invited to share their insights related to the application of teaching innovation.
Stream 1: Open Topics Including Blended Learning
This stream is intended to support faculty-driven ideas that align with the priorities outlined in Toronto Metropolitan University’s 2020/2025 academic plan and The Faculty of Engineering and Architectural Science’s (FEAS) Strategic Plan. Funding will be awarded to proposals that demonstrate evidence of enhancement to teaching and learning excellence and that demonstrate significant impact for students, which can be published at recognized conferences or in journals.
Enhanced undergraduate and graduate student experience, engagement and success are the focus of this stream and the funding program. Funding will be awarded for tangible projects that will benefit undergraduate or graduate students.
Stream 2: Promoting Analytical Thinking and Decision-Making in Courses
This stream calls for teaching innovation proposals focused on developing students’ analytical thinking and decision-making competencies. Applicants are invited to apply different pedagogical techniques such as active learning strategies, blended learning and more to enhance student achievement.
Analytical thinking and decision-making include:
- Identifying what is known and unknown.
- Extracting key information from data.
- Identifying problems.
- Developing solutions.
- Drawing reasoned conclusions and testing and verifying solutions.
Stream 3: Outreach Innovation
This stream is intended to promote faculty teaching and aligning community engagement with the FEAS Strategic Plan. Funding will be awarded to proposals that present topics in an interactive and engaging format to high school students. Proposals should indicate the delivery method of the topics and a description of the hands-on activities that will be completed, if applicable.
It is recommended that proposals leverage on-campus labs and facilities, assuming that delivery can be completed in person. Proposals should have clearly defined learning outcomes for the students and identify connections between the area of research and the Ontario high school curriculum (external link) . The facilitation of this experience can be completed by the faculty member and/or their graduate assistants. The proposal should highlight one of the two delivery methods:
- On-campus experience during the weekend for over three hours with at least two hours of the time allocated to activities that foster hands-on experiential learning.
- Off-campus experience during the weekdays in the class, taking place over 1-1.5 hours. This method must directly cover concepts from the Ontario high school curriculum noted above.
Opportunity and Impact
Faculty will have the opportunity to highlight their research in an experience geared towards high school students. This experience will inform potential students of the exceptional work underway at FEAS pertaining to engineering and architectural science applications. It will further their understanding of the endless possibilities within STEM while allowing them to envision themselves as future students on campus.
Graduate students and research assistants working under faculty will also be impacted by this proposal, as it will afford them the ability to begin to learn the basics of pedagogy. It will develop their communication skills with respect to various audiences, as it will challenge them to convey their research to an audience who will not be familiar with the parameters or terminology of their work.
Stream 4: Indigenous Education
This stream is intended to support equity, diversity and inclusion (EDI) in the curriculum, teaching, learning, and student engagement or experience identified in the FEAS Strategic Plan. Funding will be awarded to proposals that integrate Indigenous history, content and perspectives into teaching. It is recommended that proposals leverage collaboration and partnerships with Indigenous members, researchers and/or communities. Proposals should have clearly defined learning outcomes to address the truth and reconciliation action within the university and community at large.
Opportunity and Impact
Faculty will have the opportunity to explore Indigenous content related to their courses and research to address truth and reconciliation founded on knowledge and respect. This experience will augment Indigenous and non-Indigenous students' learning and perspectives while giving them the opportunity to reflect on the profession's responsibility to the land and Indigenous communities.
To be eligible, you must be a regular or associate Toronto Metropolitan University Faculty Association (RFA) member of FEAS.
All applications must be submitted in PDF format via email to Andrea Moon at andrea.moon@torontomu.ca by 4:00 p.m on July 15, 2021.
A committee composed of FEAS associate deans and the community outreach team will make the final decisions.
Your proposal should include:
- Your name and affiliated department.
- Title of the proposal.
- Description of how the proposed use of funds will enable you to develop, expand upon, or implement promising pedagogical innovations, approaches and experiments. This section should also indicate how the proposed use of funds will address a unique need in the community, department and/or Faculty (maximum 500 words).
- Description of the hands-on activities that will accompany your presentation, as well as a list of materials and/or resources you require in order to carry out the proposal (maximum 500 words).
- Budget and justification (maximum half page).
- Student impact information, including a description of the learning outcomes high school students will walk away with, and how you plan on meeting these learning outcomes.
- Progress report (only applicable if you received any previous DPI funding).
Please direct inquiries to Andrea Moon at andrea.moon@torontomu.ca.
The FEAS Research and Innovation Office (RiO) at the Faculty of Engineering and Architectural Science offers three (3) competitions for the Dean's Research Fund (DRF): 1) DRF-Booster, 2) DRF-Travel, and 3) DRF-Undergraduate Research Experience. These competitions are available each year and for every career stage, with the aim of bolstering faculty research programs, providing research opportunities for trainees, and improving our overall success in external grant competitions.
If you have any questions, please email swaldman@torontomu.ca.
This competitive fund is awarded in two streams, one for highly-rated unsuccessful external grant applications and the other to support new Indigenous research initiatives, as follows:
Stream 1 – Unsuccessful Applications:
This fund is to support unsuccessful applicants of any highly-rated unsuccessful external grant application in the previous academic year.
Stream 2 - Indigenous Research:
This fund is to support new research initiatives that have the potential to benefit one or more Indigenous groups or communities. Examples may include, but are not limited to:
● high-performance buildings for northern communities
● sustainable power generation for remote communities
● water quality engineering
● addressing the digital infrastructure gap
Depending on availability of funding, up to 6 DRF-Booster awards are available per year, each valued at $10,000 per award for a one year term. Depending on the applicant pool, a minimum of 3 of these awards (50%) will be reserved for early career researchers. An early career researcher is defined as a faculty member who is less than six (6) years from the date of their first academic appointment, minus eligible delays in research (maternity, parental, medical, bereavement, etc.).
Eligibility
To be eligible, the applicant must be a FEAS faculty member and can only submit one application per competition. DRF-Booster applications may have co-applicants from any department within FEAS or other faculties within Toronto Metropolitan University. In addition, applicants cannot hold the same category of a DRF-Booster grant in two consecutive years.
Faculty members who received DRF-Booster funding in a previous competition must submit a one-page free-form report on the outcome of the previous funding, as part of their current DRF-Booster application.
For DRF-Booster Stream 1 (Unsuccessful Applicants) applications, the applicant must be the principal investigator on the unsuccessful application and a plan for resubmission (not necessarily to the same program) is required.
Incomplete applications, and applications with budgets that exceed the term and/or value of the award, will not be considered.
Use of Funds for DRF-Booster
Funds from the DRF-Booster must be used exclusively to support Toronto Metropolitan University graduate students and/or post-doctoral fellows involved in the proposed research. Travel expenses are not eligible. Any unused funds will expire at the end of term of the award.
Deadlines
The deadline to apply to DRF-Booster is the end of April in each competition year.
Review Procedures
The review committee is composed of the Dean and Associate Deans. Proposals will be judged on the merit of the: (i) written proposal including the plan for resubmission (if applicable), (ii) research excellence of the applicant, (iii) role of highly qualified personnel in the research, (iv) how EDI is taken into account, (v) evidence of research outcomes (e.g. publications, descriptions of impact, and/or creative works), and (vi) prior DRF-Booster funding history. All review decisions are final and cannot be appealed.
Application Instructions
In order to be considered, all applications must be uploaded to the Research Information System (RIS). Once logged on to RIS, go to “Faculty Grants/Faculty Applications Submission” and select the category you wish to apply to from the dropdown list: “[program year] FEAS DRF-Booster” Complete the application form and upload your full application as a PDF document. The full application must include:
- Name and department of the applicant and any co-applicants (if applicable).
- Title of the project.
- Summary of the project (maximum 750 words). This summary must include a description of how Equity, Diversity, and Inclusion (EDI) will be taken into account in the project.
- Expected outcomes and milestones, including the plan for resubmission (if applicable) (maximum 400 words).
- Budget and justification (maximum half page).
- Proof of need and relationship to other grants currently held by applicant (maximum half page).
- Grant history that lists all grants awarded from the past three years to present, including the title of project, funding source and amount of funds per year. For group awards, indicate the applicant’s share. If the applicant received a DRF-Booster award in the past, indicate this and briefly outline the achievements.
- List all published and/or in-press peer reviewed journal publications, conference proceedings and/or creative works of the principal applicant for the past four years to present. Underline names of any students and indicate source of funding in brackets. Abstracts are not required nor are the co-applicants’ publications.
- List all highly qualified personnel (master’s, doctoral and post-doctoral fellows) who are currently being supervised or co-supervised by the principal applicant. Indicate the start date and completion date for each graduate student. Co-applicants’ details of highly qualified personnel are not required.
- If you are applying for the DRF-Booster (Stream 1 – Unsuccessful Applicants), copies of the research proposal and peer-review comments of the recent unsuccessful grant application for the previous year’s competition must accompany the application.
- If you have received DRF-Booster awards in a previous competition, you must upload a one-page free-form report on the outcome of your funding as part of your DRF application. The report must briefly describe the research enabled by the award and the activities undertaken to secure additional funding.
As a faculty member, DRF-Travel is available to you every year to supplement conference (virtual or in-person) registration fees and associated travel costs. The maximum award for travel (domestic or international) is $1,000.
For those faculty requesting the Dependent Care Supplement, an additional $500 may be made available to supplement dependent travel, caregiver travel, or care-related costs (total maximum award of $1,500).
Eligibility
To be eligible, you must be a FEAS faculty member and can only submit only one application per academic year. The program only covers conference travel between May to April of the current fiscal year. Once you receive an award, you are not eligible to apply until the start of the next fiscal year in May.
Incomplete applications will not be considered.
Use of Funds for DRF-Travel
Funds are awarded for your sole use and are not transferable to any person who may be travelling on your behalf. Approved travel funds must be spent for the conference specified in the application. Any unused funds will expire at the end of the academic year.
Dependent Care Supplement
If your dependent care responsibilities require you to bring dependents or a caregiver with you to the conference location, or alternatively, to arrange additional temporary childcare at home, you may request an additional $500 supplement to help cover those costs.
Deadlines
There are no deadlines to apply to DRF-Travel; however, you are encouraged to apply as soon as possible.
Review Procedures
Applications will be reviewed on a rolling basis (typically monthly), based on the availability of funds.
Application Instructions
In order to be considered, all applications must be uploaded to the Research Information System (RIS). Once logged on to RIS, go to “Faculty Grants/Faculty Applications Submission” and select the category you wish to apply to from the dropdown list: “[program year] DRF-Travel.” Complete the application form and upload your full application as a PDF document. The full application must include:
1. Name and department of the applicant.
2. Title, date and location of the conference.
3. Title of paper delivered and whether it was invited or contributed.
4. Estimated or actual costs (e.g. transportation, meals, accommodations). If applicable, include Dependent Care costs under the “Other” category.
5. Total funding from other sources.
6. Papers delivered or published within the last three years.
7. What opportunities this travel award will provide in enhancing our research reputation.
Redeeming Your Funds
You are responsible for redeeming your funds, which may be redeemed upon completion of travel. Here is the procedure for redeeming your funds:
- Collect your documentation and complete the application to make a claim against your research account. Toronto Metropolitan University’s Financial Services’ research accounting page has all the forms you need in order to file a travel claim.
- Submit your documentation and application in iExpense.
Tips to Speed Up Your Claim
- Attach all receipts in the order that they appear on the form.
- For foreign currency expenses to be reimbursed in Canadian funds, the management system's exchange rate is applied, but if you include your credit card statement, you will receive the same currency exchange rate as charged.
- Ensure you have sufficient funds in your stated research account.
- Obtain all signatures required before submitting.
RiO is offering competitive grants to faculty members of up to $6,700 through the Dean’s Research Fund-Undergraduate Research Experience (DRF-URE) award. This grant is co-sponsored by the Faculty of Engineering and Architectural Science (FEAS). The total number of awards offered will be subject to the availability of funds.
The DRF-URE helps to provide 12 continuous weeks of spring/summer research experience to third-year undergraduate students under the supervision of FEAS faculty members.
Funds must be used exclusively to support a Toronto Metropolitan University third-year undergraduate student. Travel expenses, research equipment and supplies are not eligible expenses. The supervisor and student must submit a report at the end of summer. Student payment will be handled by the recipient’s research account support officer (RASO).
Eligibility
To apply, you must be a FEAS faculty member and can only submit one application per competition. Co-applicants or applications from another Faculty within Toronto Metropolitan University are not permitted. Students must be in the third year of their undergraduate degree programs and have CGPAs of 3.0 or higher. Students may not concurrently hold another research assistant (RA) position on campus during the period of the DRF-URE.
Faculty members who received DRF-URE funding in a previous competition must submit a one-page free-form report on the outcome of their previous funding, as part of their application for the current year of DRF-URE program support.
Incomplete applications, or applications with an unidentified student, will not be considered.
Use of Funds for DRF-URE
Funds are awarded exclusively to support the stipend of the trainee.
Deadlines
The deadline to apply to DRF-URE is the end of April in each competition year.
Review Procedures
The review committee is composed of the Dean and Associate Deans. Proposals will be judged on the: (i) research opportunities and experiences offered to the student, and (ii) CGPA of the student. Award results are typically announced within three to four weeks after the DRF application deadline. All review decisions are final and cannot be appealed.
Application Instructions
In order to be considered, all applications must be uploaded to the Research Information System (RIS). Once logged on to RIS, go to “Faculty Grants/Faculty Applications Submission” and select the category you wish to apply to from the dropdown list: “[program year] DRF-URE.” Complete the application form and upload your full application as a PDF document. The full application must include:
- Name and department of the applicant.
- Name, program, and CGPA of the student.
- Title of the research project.
- Description/summary of the research project (maximum 200 words).
- List of the RA opportunities and experiences offered (maximum 200 words).
- Description/summary of how Equity, Diversity, and Inclusion (EDI) will be taken into account in the research project (maximum 200 words).
- Number of undergraduate, master’s, doctoral students and post-doctoral fellows currently under your supervision.
- If you received DRF-URE funding in a previous competition, you must also submit a one-page free-form report on the outcomes of your previous funding as part of the application for the current year of DRF-URE support. The report must briefly describe the research enabled by the award and the benefits to the trainee supported.
Please visit the Faculty Affairs website for details on what content is required for a promotion dossier. You’ll also find important application forms, checklists, guides and key dates, as well as information regarding salary transfers. Please direct any questions about completing your application to Faculty Affairs.
Note: Once you submit your application, the Office of the Vice-Provost, Faculty Affairs will handle the administrative elements required on behalf of the Faculty Promotion Committee.
Are you a principal investigator? From post-docs to lab managers, Human Resources can help you identify the positions that you may need to fill, as well as all required forms and contacts for approvals.
If you have specific questions or require assistance with hiring, please contact:
Aerospace, Mechanical, Industrial, and Mechatronics Engineering
Denis Arseneault, Research Accounts Support Officer
ENG-377
416-979-5000 ext. 4637
denis.arseneault@torontomu.ca
Chemical, Electrical and Computer Engineering
Xue-Li Robinson, Research Accounts Support Officer
ENG-377
416-979-5000 ext. 4927
xrobinson@torontomu.ca
Canada Research Chairs (CRCs), Architectural Science, Civil Engineering
Stacey Park, Research Accounts Support Officer
ENG-377
416-979-5000 ext. 6482
stacey.park@torontomu.ca
Toronto Metropolitan University’s Financial Services Department is your online resource for payment and purchasing information. If you have specific questions or require assistance, please contact the staff listed below.
Aerospace, Mechanical, Industrial, and Mechatronics Engineering
Denis Arseneault, Research Accounts Support Officer
ENG-377
416-979-5000 ext. 4637
denis.arseneault@torontomu.ca
Chemical, Electrical and Computer Engineering
Xue-Li Robinson, Research Accounts Support Officer
ENG-377
416-979-5000 ext. 4927
xrobinson@torontomu.ca
Canada Research Chairs (CRCs), Architectural Science, Civil Engineering
Stacey Park, Research Accounts Support Officer
ENG-377
416-979-5000 ext. 6482
stacey.park@torontomu.ca
As a professor at FEAS, you know that teaching is the foundation of everything that we do. In order to cultivate and promote teaching excellence—and enhance student engagement and well-being—we collaborate with Toronto Metropolitan University’s Centre for Excellence in Learning and Teaching to provide pedagogical resources to our faculty members via the Toronto Metropolitan University Library and Archives, the Media Services Department, and others. We also offer you development opportunities such as the Dean’s Pedagogical Fund, training workshops, and one-on-one personalized guidance sessions.
For more information, or to book a one-on-one session, please contact the Associate Dean of Teaching and Outreach Dr. Medhat Shehata