The Fields Institute invites you to submit proposals for our Shared Graduate Courses Program for Fall 2025 (September to December 2025) and Winter 2026 (January to April 2026).
The Fields Academy
Shared Graduate Courses Program increases the range of advanced mathematics courses available to students at Ontario universities and the program: (a) increases demand for these courses, enlarging their enrolment; (b) makes some contribution to eliminating unnecessary duplication of resources; and (c) allows grad students at the different departments to make connections with each other and with other faculty members.
It is intended that these should be courses in advanced topics, not the core graduate courses in the subject. These will give each institution the opportunity to showcase the areas in which they are strong. As a side benefit, it will allow each university's graduate chair to interact with their peers at other institutions to share ideas and solutions to problems.
Important Dates
- Submission Deadline: end of day (EST) on Sunday, February 2nd, 2025 - Extended!
Required Information
- Instructor information (including instructor email)
- University department information (including department head/chair email)
- Course title and brief description (can also be submitted as a single pdf file)
Important Logistical Information
By submitting the proposal, it means that the instructor agrees to:
- Have the course fully accessible for online students; and,
- Use the learning management system (LMS) managed by the Fields Institute (Moodle) or some other third-party LMS (aka cannot use your home university LMS).
Other Logistical Information
The Fields Institute envisages running this program as follows:
- Individual instructors at PSUs can submit proposals for courses to you (the Department Chair or the Graduate Chair) who will then use this form to submit the proposals to the Fields Institute. This will ensure that you approve of their proposals.
- A small committee chaired by the Fields Institute Deputy Director will advise on the courses to be offered each year, with membership decided by the Fields Institute Director and Deputy Director.
- The Fields Institute reserves the right to determine the number of courses that will be funded through this program in a given year.
- The instructor will give recommended grades to every student, but each institution will be responsible for assigning the final grade to its own students.
- Students are required to register through Fields for the purposes of record-keeping.
- If students want credit for the course to be transferred to their home institution, it is their responsibility to ensure this can be done.
- The online distribution of the courses will be administered by the Fields Institute. The course lectures will be recorded and archived, and will be available in subsequent years in the same way that graduate courses attached to thematic programs at the Fields Institute are available.
- The Fields Institute will pay CAD$10,000 to a PSU department for a graduate course of 36 hours of lectures. This funding is intended to support the costs of teaching the course, for example, through paying for a course release for the instructor, paying for the cost of a TA, or paying for necessary equipment/technologies to carry out the course online. This is not intended as a salary buy-out for the instructor.
- The courses will be freely available to all members of PSUs in the year in which they are offered. Students from other universities wanting to participate in a Fields-coordinated course will be required to pay a registration fee of CAD$500.
Should you have any questions or require additional information, please do not hesitate to contact Shu-Chen Kuo (Senior Program Coordinator, Fields Institute) at
skuo@fieldsinstitute.ca or Kasra Rafi (Acting Deputy Director, Fields Institute) at
krafi@fieldsinstitute.ca.