Grants and Professional Travel

Please note applications for faculty research travel must be submitted and approved before the travel has occurred.

It is important for all faculty members to keep current in their disciplines and in the development of pedagogy. Because the college recognizes it shares this responsibility, the faculty development office administers funds for full time faculty to attend one annual conference within their discipline. If a faculty member has unused funds from one conference within a year, the rest of the unused money can be put toward a second conference, as long as it occurs within the same year. Unused funds are no longer allowed to roll over from one year to another.

Any tenured or tenure-track full-time faculty member is eligible to apply for professional travel funds. Faculty on leave are also eligible as well as faculty who are teaching specialists, full-time adjuncts, and on joint appointments.

Eligible faculty may be reimbursed up to $500 for expenses related to professional travel each year (beginning on June 1). Travel to conventions, workshops, or meetings directly related to professional activities represent appropriate use of these funds. Normally, regular funds may not be used for professional expenses other than conference attendance and travel. Unused funds are no longer be allowed to rollover.

Faculty members who are presenting, performing, moderating a session, or have a position within the organization that requires them to attend a specific event are eligible to be reimbursed up to $1500. That number is contingent upon annual budget allotments and may change at any time.

Faculty who are attending a conference outside the United States are eligible to be reimbursed for an additional $400. Faculty are eligible to receive international travel funds only once during a budget year.

Expenses for faculty travel to attend professional conferences and/or performances and presentations will only be reimbursed to the maximum appropriate above the expenses covered by any honorarium or stipend received by the traveler. The amount of the honorarium should be subtracted from the total costs of the trip at the time of the request for reimbursement. For example, a faculty member agrees to be the keynote speaker at a conference and is paid $500. The trip costs a total of $1200. Even if the faculty member would otherwise be eligible to be reimbursed for $1200, the maximum reimbursement is $700.

After returning from a trip, faculty who have been awarded travel funds should complete the Travel Expense Report, attach all receipts, and submit it to Mark Pleiss. The report form should include all the expenses associated with the trip regardless of whether the expense was actually covered by travel grant awarded. This will enable Faculty Development to determine whether to request an increase in faculty travel funds. The information will also be used to double check the accuracy of office records of charges on the faculty member’s procurement card. A Travel Expense report must be submitted in order for future travel funds to be awarded.

Purpose: This in-house small grant program is designed to help faculty to include diversity-related content in courses and to increase inclusivity. More specifically, this grant can be used to achieve any one of the following faculty goals:

1. To make meaningful changes to an existing course (whether or not that course has a Diversity and Power [DP] designation) in order to increase the diversity-related content of that course.
2. To help faculty make major changes to the pedagogy being used to teach a course in order to increase inclusivity.
3. To develop a new course that to modify an existing course so that would have a strong DEI component

Maximum possible award: $750, up to $500 can be taken as a stipend

Call for Proposals – Diversity & Inclusivity CDE Grant 

This in-house micro-grant program is designed to help faculty to identify ways to:

• to increase in breadth or depth the diversity content in their course(s), or
• increase the range of inclusive pedagogy utilized in their course(s), or
• intentionally build their self-awareness and cultural responsiveness as an increasingly equitable educator.

The hope is that recipients of starter micro-grants will apply for another Inclusive Teaching and Learning grant in the future.

Maximum possible award: $250, up to $100 can be taken as a stipend (from the amount remaining after materials needed to facilitate growth sought are purchased)

Call for Proposals – Diversity & Inclusivity Startup Micro-Grant

Purpose: This in-house small grant program is designed to help teams of faculty work collaboratively to:

• increase in breadth or depth the diversity content in their course(s), or
• increase the range of inclusive pedagogy utilized in their course(s), or
• intentionally build their individual and collective self-awareness and cultural responsiveness as increasingly equitable educators.

Teams must include at least four people that share some sort of commonality. They might all come from the same major or minor. They might teach students who want similar careers (e.g., health-related careers). They might all teach using a similar teaching style (e.g., experiential learning). they might all be interested in being culturally equitable educators. They might be interested in more activism and care to work to develop themselves as anti-racist or anti-sexist or anti-homophobic (etc.) educators.

Funding will be used to purchase a chosen common book (or material to facilitate growth sought – but not conference attendance) for each participant as well as food/snacks for during team-discussion sessions.

Maximum possible award: $2500, up to $200 per person can be taken as a stipend (from the amount remaining beyond books/materials and food).

Call for Proposals – Diversity & Inclusivity Team Grant