Sponsored Research Grants for Faculty

The deadline for 2022-23 proposals has passed, thank you to those who applied!

About Sponsored Research Grants For Faculty

Each year Evergreen provides funding to regular faculty to pursue research and creative projects. Two categories of funding are available:

Salary

Salary for up to two months during the upcoming summer or for paid leaves of up to one quarter during the following academic year. Requests to support leave during fall, winter, or spring (i.e., for an approved fall, winter or spring leave without pay) must be made in the academic year prior to the one in which the proposed award will be used. For example, a faculty member wishing to use Sponsored Research funding in spring 2023 must apply during this 2021-22 cycle (i.e., in fall 2021). 

Resources

To provide goods and services to support a project or professional agenda. Funds may be used to purchase materials for research and creative projects, attend professional meetings, publish scholarly work, or purchase specialized books, software or equipment.

An applicant may request both types of funding in a single proposal.

Eligibility

• All regular members of the faculty (including library faculty) are eligible for sponsored research awards. Adjunct, administrative, retired, and resource faculty are not eligible.
• Faculty must meet the conditions of article 15 of the current collective bargaining agreement at the time awards are offered. 
• There is no relationship between eligibility for professional leaves and eligibility for Sponsored Research, as described in section 17.3.3 of the collective bargaining agreement. While a person could not hold both leaves simultaneously, they could hold them consecutively.
• An individual faculty member may receive one Sponsored Research award per academic year and up to three awards within five consecutive academic years.  A faculty member may not receive awards more than two academic years in a row. 
• Sponsored Research awards will not be granted for the sole purpose of completing advanced degree requirements.
• For complete eligibility requirements and award limitations, please refer to professional development provisions of the current faculty collective bargaining agreement.

Application Procedures

An application consists of: 

1. A two to three-page narrative proposal and budget
2. Two letters of support which speak directly to the scholarly or creative merit of the proposed activity
3. A current curriculum vita
4. Any reports from funded Sponsored Research awards during the previous five years at Evergreen.

The narrative proposal should begin with the project title and the applicant's name, e-mail address and campus telephone number. The narrative needs to include and will be evaluated according to the following elements:

• The purpose, broad scope and relevance of the proposed work i.e., (introduce what are you doing and explain why it is important)
• A statement of the author's professional agenda showing how the proposed activity fits into that agenda (i.e., address how this project supports and benefits your research, scholarship and/or other professional goals)
• Details of your plans for carrying out the proposed activities, including a timeline

The budget section of the proposal should clearly delineate that the funds requested are reasonable and adequate for meeting the needs of the project and should include the following:

• Why grant funds are required to carry out this work
• Dates and length of any salary/leave requested
• A budget for any non-salary items
• Information concerning other sources of expected remuneration for the proposed activity, if any.

Submission Guidelines

Materials must be submitted via the forms below by the application deadline:

Submit your application materials 

Submit letters of support

Selection Process

A faculty committee, selected from across planning units by the Agenda Committee, studies the proposals and selects the recipients. Proposals are evaluated based on the following criteria:

The review committee will assess each application based on the:

• Significance and merit of the project with regards to college's curricular offerings, services or resources
• Potential benefit to the applicant's research and scholarship 
• Reasonableness of the budget
• Thoroughness of the application. 

Selection for this award will have no bearing on selection for any other awards for which an applicant may have applied unless the applicant has proposed the same activities in another grant proposal that has subsequently received funding. Committee members will compare Sponsored Research applications and Foundation Grant applications from the same applicant to ensure the same activities do not receive double funding.

Applicants may find it helpful to review the following slide presentation: Writing proposals for peer review.

Sample Applications

With permission from past recipients of Sponsored Research awards, we are pleased to be able to share the following examples of successful proposals:

• Jeff Antonelis-Lapp -- for field work toward the publication of a natural history of Mount Rainier National Park
• Maria Bastaki -- to establish a toxicology laboratory and advance research in toxicology as it relates to environmental health
• Dharshi Bopegedera -- to complete a laboratory experiment and prepare the results for publication in the Journal of Chemical Education, and to write two other articles for the same journal on work already completed
• Anne Fischel and Lin Nelson -- to continue work on the project "No Borders: Communities Living and Working with ASARCO"
• R. T. Leverich -- to make components for two new sculptural works that build on previous stone carving themes and experience
• Paul McCreary -- for the project "Creating Undergraduate Research Activities based on Visual and Nanoscale Molecular Dynamics Software"
• Eric Stein -- for the project "Immigrant Birth Stories: Narrating 'American Rites of Passage'"
• Brian Walter -- to continue research on directed graph algebras
• Elizabeth Williamson -- to edit a collection of essays entitled Religion and Drama in Early Modern England: Studies in the the Materiality of Performance

General Considerations

• In order to be funded, proposed projects must have the highest sort of merit which the college demands of itself.
• Paid leaves and summer salaries financed by these funds may only be used in support of professional activity other than teaching. The professional activity or scholarship, however, could be about teaching or pedagogy (and should be expected to enhance one's teaching), but the expectation is for a product additional to one's own teaching activity.
• Given the size of Evergreen and the constraints on faculty staffing patterns it will not be possible to ignore completely the impact of a faculty member's absence for leaves proposed during the regular academic year.
• A report on the previous use of any Sponsored Research money is required as part of any Sponsored Research application.
• Recipients of Sponsored Research funding are expected to complete the project for which they applied in the time period proposed. Changes to a project's topic, approach, scope or budget must be approved in advance by the Academic Grants Manager or the Sponsored Research Committee.
• Sponsored research recipients must submit a report to academicgrants@evergreen.edu describing the results of the sponsored activity. Reports are due at the end of the next quarter following the award.

For more information, contact John Caraher, Academic Dean, caraherj@evergreen.edu and academicgrants@evergreen.edu