Internal Funding

Internal Funding 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. 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. 

Faculty Conference Grant

These grants fund faculty research and creative presentations at major conferences and meetings.

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.

Other CHaSS Funding

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.

CHaSS Open Access Funding Policy

USU Library can help you make the pre-print version of your work open access, aligning with USU Policy 586. USU Library also has an open access formal application fund (due Jan 1 and/or July 1). Erica Finch in the USU Libraries can assist you in making your scholarship open access.

In the past two years, requests for open access fees from CHaSS has significantly increased. While we have been able to partially meet most of these demands, this is not a sustainable model for the future.

CHaSS wants to encourage researchers to share their data in ways that are most impactful and beneficial for their research agendas. But we do not have a dedicated funding stream for faculty, graduate students, and undergraduate students to request funds to cover open access fees from publishers.

For those pieces with a CHaSS faculty researcher as a primary author that have community, legislative, private foundation, non-profit, and other audiences that may lack institutional access to academic databases, CHaSS may be able to partially invest in the open access fees.

To request funding for open access pieces that have a clear audience that may not have access to academic databases, faculty should:

1. Pursue existing internal and external mechanisms for open access funding (such as USU Library’s biannual open access fund).
2. Discuss with their Department Head any departmental commitment.
3. Consider using returned F&A and existing research funding to partially cover these fees.
4. Contact the Associate Dean for Research (Julia Gossard) with:
   
   1. Brief abstract of the piece with publication information
   2. Brief description of the audience
   3. Brief explanation of why making this piece open access would be beneficial
   4. A list of matching funding for open access fees
   5. A copy of the publisher’s estimate for open access fees

The CHaSS Internal Grant Review Committee will review all applications for open access fees, determining if the fees are an appropriate and impactful use of college funds.

For federal grants that require open access publications, faculty should plan to use their returned F&A to help fund these publications.

Funding for graduate student open access fees is not possible at this time.

Other CHaSS Research 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.