CHaSS Funding Opportunities

CHaSS Research Objective

To help CHaSS faculty at all USU campuses advance, undertake, and present their research, scholarship of teaching and learning, and creative work, we provide a variety of research development funding. This site provides information on our current funding programs.

CHaSS Competitive Funding

Funding is awarded on a competitive basis and is secondary to departmental funding and/or Office of Research “start up” funds. A committee of faculty reviews applications, making recommendations on funding suitability to the Associate Dean for Research.

CHaSS Grant Programs

CHaSS provides competitive funding for faculty research and creative agendas. These funds should be used to help catalyze a faculty member’s research and/or creative agenda. Faculty are encouraged to think of these programs as “seed” funding for projects, especially those that could garner extramural funding from sponsored activities and individual research and creative awards.

Faculty Conference Grant: These grants fund faculty research and creative presentations at major conferences and meetings.
RFP Apply Rubric

C.A.R.E. Award: The CHaSS Creative Activity and Research Enhancement (C.A.R.E.) Award supports faculty research and creative productivity by providing funding for a project that will lead to the development of a clearly defined research or creative product within twelve months of the award.
RFP Apply Rubric

The following four funding mechanisms are available to all CHaSS faculty but you should obtain the application from the Associate Dean for Research after reading through the available RFP.

Reputation Catalyst Subvention Grant: An additional subvention grant for a conference, workshop, or professional meeting that is essential to a faculty member’s reputation (especially those soon up for tenure and/or promotion). These are highly competitive with only 1-2 awarded per year.
RFP

External Scholar Mentorship Grant: Facilitates mentorship of faculty and graduate students by external, established scholars. This grant funds hands-on workshops geared towards mentorship of CHaSS faculty with a required student component (either in-person or virtually).
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CHaSS Collaborative Research Grant: Facilitate interdisciplinary research in CHaSS. This grant provides funding to host hands-on workshops or co-writing sessions (either in-person or virtually).
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CHaSS Publication Subvention Fund: Support the costs to publish books (monographs). Funds are paid directly to publishers.
RFP

USU Library works with faculty to make their work open access either through a formal application fund (due Jan 1 and/or July 1) or through Digital Commons. Erica Finch, USU Librarian, can help you learn more.

Other CHaSS Funding

Other CHaSS units also provide funding to faculty and graduate students. Overseen and administered by the individual units described below, these additional opportunities provide CHaSS faculty and graduate students opportunities to layer and expand their funding sources for impactful research and creative works.

Mountain West Center for Regional Studies

Center for Intersectional Gender Studies and Research

Office of Research Seed Grants

The USU Office of Research is a university-level office that the Vice President for Research (VPR) directs. The Office of Research seed grant program’s goal is to increase external funding success at USU. Seed grants support new, innovative lines of research with the potential for external funding.

To apply for these awards, please contact the CHaSS Associate Dean for Research. All of these awards require that you have previously attended either the Office of Research Annual Faculty Proposal Writing Seminar or the Office of Research's Arts & Humanities Grant Writing Seminar.

You must submit your application to the Associate Dean for Research, Julia Gossard, in CHaSS at least 1 week prior to the University’s deadlines. CHaSS applications are due by January 8 to meet the January 15 university application deadline or by June 8 to meet the June 15 university application deadline.

The Research Catalyst (RC) program provides funding to help applicants develop projects that will lead to future external funding. It is expected that funded RC projects will result in the development and submission of at least one proposal to an external funding agency.
The Grant-Writing Experience through Mentorship (GEM) program provides funding to enhance the professional development of investigators through one-on-one research/creative scholarship and grant-writing interaction with successful mentors.
Integrated Team Research (ITR) provides funding to generate novel solutions as an integrated research team that address a research challenge and/or present-day problem that will lead to future external funding. The expectation is the team will be a minimum of three PIs, two of which must be at USU. ITR grants provide up to two years of seed funding for up to $100,000 for the development of a multi-PI external proposal submission of $1 million or more.
Note: The Office of Research has retired the SPARC program, replacing it with the ITR.

External Funding through SPO

CHaSS faculty are encouraged to seek external funding for their research and creative activities. Within the Office of Research, Sponsored Programs (colloquially referred to as “SPO”) reviews, approves, and submits proposals and applications for extramural sponsored research and training activities. CHaSS faculty are active and successful in their pursuit of external grant funding from institutions like the National Endowment for the Humanities, the National Science Foundation, and the National Institutes for Health.

External Funding Submissions through USU's Sponsored Programs Office

All proposals for grants, contracts, and agreements must be submitted to the Sponsored Programs Office (SPO) for review, approval, and routing via Kuali Research PRIOR to SPOs’ submission to the funding sponsor. You should contact CHaSS Grant Proposal Development Support Specialist and review SPO Proposal Preparation Resources early and often in your grant proposal preparation.