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Graduate Student Research and Travel Support Fund

January 3, 2008

On behalf of the Graduate School, welcome to the start of Spring Term 2008! The Graduate School will once again provide supplemental funding for graduate student research projects and travel to present research results at conferences. We also introduce a new program component that will help fund international experiences.  Please notify your faculty and graduate students that they may submit Spring 2008 proposals for the support of graduate research and travel using the enclosed form.  

As in the past few semesters, working together as partners, we can ensure that every UA graduate student has sufficient funding to conduct high-quality research and that every UA graduate student presents at least one paper per year at a national or international meeting. At international meetings, we hope that students will avail themselves of other opportunities for learning and interaction at a foreign venue.

For Research Awards, priority will be given to thesis, pre-dissertation, and dissertation research.  For Travel Awards, priority will be given to graduate students who have been accepted to present personally their own research (or creative activity) a national or international meeting of their discipline's major academic/professional organization.

Requests for awards to be used during the Spring 2008 semester OR DURING SUMMER 2008 should be submitted to the Graduate School by January 25, 2008. Please note this wrinkle: many student initiate research projects and/or travel to meetings in the summer, and I would prefer to fund as many of these needs as practicable during the Spring 2008 round of proposals. Graduate School grants will be limited to a maximum of $300.

To maximize the number of students that can be funded, as well as the total amount of funding for student research and travel, we will continue the cost-sharing program that was initiated in Fall 2006. This approach has been extraordinarily successful. In Fall 2007, for example, total research/travel support increased to almost $80,000, compared with $37,000 in Fall 2005 and nearly 150 students received support, compared with 85 in 2005! 

As in Fall 2007, departments may submit as many nominations as they deem appropriate, provided that each nomination be matched with some sort of departmental or college cost share and all nominations above 3 be matched at least 1:1 with non-Graduate School funds.

Requests for awards should be initiated by the student's faculty adviser and endorsed and submitted by the department chair to the Graduate School.  The memorandum should include a budget, information about cost sharing, and, if travel is involved, an indication as to whether or not the student will be personally presenting his or her own work.  If you are submitting requests for more than one student, please rank order your requests.

For year-end tax reporting purposes, please indicate on the cover sheet for proposal whether each nominee is a U.S. resident or not.

New International Enrichment Travel Component

International educational experiences are important to ALL UA students, including graduate students. Presenting work at an international meeting is an excellent way for grad students to accomplish TWO goals – improve their CVs and learn about the host country in which the meeting is being held. To encourage more international paper presentations and actively encourage grad students to take advantage of ‘value-added’ international educational enrichment components of an international conference, we are please to announce a new funding program for spring 2008 and beyond.

In addition to providing up to $300 in travel support for an international paper/poster presentation, we will provide up to an additional $300 (matched 1:1 with departmental/ college support) to fund pre- or post-conference educational enrichment activities that can be bundled onto the paper presentation trip, either sponsored by the conference organizers or ad hoc activities with a strong research or educational component (i.e., no skiing trip in the Alps after a meeting in Zurich).

To apply for this supplementary funding, just use the existing form and indicate that you are seeking both meeting travel and international enrichment funding (thus total request can be up to $600 per meeting/experience). Be sure to describe the international educational/ research activities you plan to participate in. Again, we require that Grad School funding be matched at least 1:1. 

:: Download Cover Sheet for Proposal  (to be completed by student's faculty adviser)

Please contact Kathleen Nodine in the Graduate School at knodine@ua.edu if you need further information.