The ways in which a sample of faculty members from the University of Illinois at Chicago create curricula is described and compared with methods selected from the curriculum development literature. An overview is presented of the university's Curriculum Development Grants (CDG) Committee program, its historical development, and several domains of decision-making. Comparisons are made concerning: different orientations to the process of curriculum development and different positions on curriculum inquiry. Both individual proposal writers and CDG committee evaluators acknowledged the necessity to allow objectives to emerge from activity. The process of group and individual decision-making was found to be more political and value-laden than purely rational. Analysis of proposals also indicated that curriculum development is situational, that it embraces the entirety of the classroom environment. Study of the CDG process revealed a strong bias toward practical rather than theoretic inquiry. It seems that the more a proposal needs support, either economic or bureaucratic, the more it must be expressed in the language of the accepted epistemology. Further study is suggested before any definitive statement can be made about the syncretism of conflicting conceptions of curriculum. Information on curriculum development grants for 1979 is appended. (SW)