An Advisory Group consisting of P-12 educators, community members, and business and industry professionals would be created by the QEP Steering Committee. The QEP Director and the participating faculty would work in consultation with this Group to generate ideas for projects for the capstone course and for developing methods to attain the broader employability goal of the QEP. The QEP Director would share information with QEP Steering Committee gleaned from this Advisory Group. The establishment of the Advisory Group would help further strengthen the University's connection with the community and could provide student opportunities, such as internships, that will aid in future employment.

The QEP Steering Committee, which will have members from across the disciplines, will develop a process to choose faculty to teach in the HUM sequence that supports the QEP and also ensure that there is "buy in" from the academic units from which faculty will be selected, so that these units see the value in "releasing" their faculty from part of their usual teaching duties to teach in the program. The QEP Director will solicit faculty applicants with substantial teaching experience, preferably those with teaching experience and/or research experience or interest in interdisciplinary studies and/or the principles of Design Thinking. In the first year of the program (AY 2019-20), faculty will be recruited to offer pilot sections of HUM 101 and 201, and these faculty will be offered a stipend of $1500 each for course development, as well as being compensated for participating in professional development prior to the beginning of the semester in which they will be teaching. The budget for professional development will vary based upon project year, type of professional development activity, and the number of faculty and Steering Committee members engaged in professional development. For the capstone class, HUM 301, which will be piloted in fall 2020, the budget is based on a projected student enrollment of 100 per semester and five students per project team. There will be twenty project teams, although faculty and assistants will be able to mentor more than one set of students in any given semester. With each faculty/assistant team mentoring four projects (20 students), there will be five teaching teams (one faculty and one graduate teaching assistant or instructional counselor per team), so initially there will be stipends for five teams. Each team member will also receive a $1500 stipend prior to the beginning of the course, due to the time commitment of attending several meetings and undergoing professional development training. If course development will involve a time commitment equivalent to teaching a class, the faculty involved could also request release time. After the capstone course has been developed and established, it will count as a regular part of each faculty member's teaching load, so no further course development stipend will be necessary, although there will still be funds available for ongoing professional development.

The teaching teams will meet before each semester starts to consider approaches to teaching as well as to devise a common syllabus and rubric. During the semester, the team will meet regularly to assess what has gone well and what has not and to consider the next steps.

Professional Development opportunities for both the new course sequence and for the QEP as a whole could include training in pedagogy, design principles, course content, and team teaching. Consultants could be brought in to facilitate these sessions from such venues as the Stanford institute for Design Thinking. Faculty might also be sent to attend workshops there or elsewhere.