Faculty Recognition & Funding Opportunities – December 1, 2016
RECOGNITION
Mihai Grunfeld, Associate Professor of Hispanic Studies, informs us that his play The Dressmaker’s Secret will open in New York "Off Broadway” on February 6, 2017 and will run through March 5. The play is an adaptation of a novel and it is about Robi, a nineteen-year-old electrician who craves all things western as he searches for identity in post WWII Communist Romania. Robi’s quest opens the doorway through which his parents’ generation comes to terms with their painful pasts. It is co-authored with Sarah Levine Simon and will be produced by The Simon Studio at 59E59 Theaters. More information about the production is available at www.dressmakerssecret.com.
Professor of English Amitava Kumar has received a 2016 USA Ford Fellowship in Literature. Each year, United States Artists (USA) awards $50,000 fellowships to the country’s “most accomplished and innovative artists” working in nine fields from architecture and design to music, theater, dance and visual arts. Fellows are chosen through a highly competitive process involving hundreds of experts, scholars, museum curators and artists who nominate candidates. Nominees then submit samples of their work to nine panels that select each annual class of Fellows, this year numbering 45 creative people. Begun in 2006 by the Ford, Rockefeller, Rasmuson and Prudential Foundations with $22 million in seed money, USA aims to mitigate the lack of unrestricted funding available to artists. Past recipients of USA Fellowships include visual artist Kara Walker, jazz composer Jason Moran, choreographer Bill T. Jones and writer Annie Proulx.
*** EXCLUSIVE OPPORTUNITY FOR VASSAR FACULTY ***
FEBRUARY 24 Catwalk Institute (Catskill, NY) welcomes proposals from artists, scholars and collaborative teams for residencies of up to 8 weeks at Catslair and Catwalk. This residential complex is situated on a magnificent historic site of 70 acres on the Hudson River across from Olana, the home of Frederic Edwin Church, America's first environmentalist and just north of Thomas Cole’s home, Cedar Grove. Residencies are available to artists, writers and scholars in all media and disciplines exploring subjects related to place, landscape and environment investigating universal aspects of nature embedded in the Hudson Valley landscape and ecology. Residencies are space/time grants fully outfitted lodging, but note that stipends are not available and visitors must have access to a car during their stay. Participation is exclusively for faculty and alumni from Columbia University, New York University, School of the Art Institute of Chicago and Vassar College. Applications are by recommendation through each institution; if you are interested, please contact Gary Hohenberger (gahohenberger@vassar.edu, x7092). Deadline February 24 for April-October 2017 residencies.
*** ATTENTION ASIA SCHOLARS ***
December 9 Faculty Enhancement Program - ASIANetwork will provide a three-week summer faculty development trip to Asia: Indonesia 2017: http://www.asianetwork.org/programs/faculty-enhancement-program/
SOME UPCOMING DEADLINES FOR EXTERNAL FUNDING
SCIENCE, TECHNOLOGY, ENGINEERING & MATHEMATICS
JANUARY 11, 2017 National Science Foundation (NSF) Major Research Instrumentation Program (MRI) serves to increase access to shared scientific and engineering instruments for research and research training in institutions of higher education. The MRI program assists with the acquisition or development of a shared research instrument that is, in general, too costly and/or not appropriate for support through other NSF programs. Instrument acquisition or development proposals that request funds from NSF in the range $100,000-$4 million may be accepted from any MRI-eligible organization. Proposals that request funds from NSF less than $100,000 may also be accepted from any MRI-eligible organization for the disciplines of mathematics or social, behavioral and economic sciences and from non-Ph.D.-granting institutions of higher education for all NSF-supported disciplines. See the full solicitation online: http://www.nsf.gov/pubs/2015/nsf15504/nsf15504.htm
Many other NSF funding opportunities are available. See the list and links here!
JANUARY 15, 2017(letters of intent) The Whitehall Foundation assists scholarly research in the life sciences through its research grants and grants-in-aid programs. It is the foundation's policy to support those dynamic areas of basic biological research that are not heavily supported by federal agencies or other foundations with specialized missions. The foundation emphasizes the support of young scientists at the beginning of their careers and productive senior scientists who wish to move into new fields of interest. 1) Research: Research grants of up to $225,000 over three years will be awarded to established scientists of all ages working at an accredited institution in the United States. Grants will not be awarded to investigators who have already received, or expect to receive, substantial support from other sources, even if it is for an unrelated purpose. 2) Grants-in-Aid: One-year grants of up to $30,000 will be awarded to researchers at the assistant professor level who experience difficulty in competing for research funds because they have not yet become firmly established. Grants-in-Aid can also be made to senior scientists. To be eligible, applicants must hold the position of assistant professor or higher, hold principal investigator status, and be considered an “independent investigator” with his/her own dedicated lab space or with lab space independent of another investigator. Letters of Intent must be received no later than January 15, 2017. Upon review, selected applicants will be invited to submit a full application by June 1, 2017. For complete program guidelines, information about previous grant recipients, and application procedures, see the Whitehall Foundation website: http://www.whitehall.org/grants/
JANUARY 31, 2017 The Simons Foundation invites applications for its Collaboration Grants for Mathematicians, which are designed to stimulate collaboration in the field of mathematics by substantially increasing collaborative contacts among mathematicians. To that end, the foundation will make a large number of collaboration grants to accomplished, active researchers in the United States who do not otherwise have access to funding that supports travel and visitors. Each grant provides $8,400 per year over five years: $6,000 per year for collaboration, travel, and research expenses for the awardee; $1,000 per year in discretionary funds for the grant recipient’s department; and $1,400 per year in indirect costs to the grant recipient’s institution. To be eligible for a grant, applicants must have a Ph.D. and tenure-track/tenured position or be a professor emeritus at a U.S. institution of higher education; have a current record of active research and publication in high-quality journals; and not hold any other external grants of over $3,000 per year that allow for support for travel or visitors during the collaboration grant award period. For complete program guidelines and application instructions, see the Simons Foundation website: https://www.simonsfoundation.org/funding/funding-opportunities/mathematics-physical-sciences/collaboration-grants-for-mathematicians/
FEBRUARY 10, 2017 The Camille & Henry Dreyfus Foundation is accepting nominations for its Henry Dreyfus Teacher-Scholar Awards Program. The annual program supports the research and teaching careers of talented young faculty in the chemical sciences at undergraduate institutions. Based on institutional nominations, the program provides discretionary funding to faculty at an early stage in their careers. The award is based on accomplishment in scholarly research with undergraduates as well as a compelling commitment to teaching, and provides an unrestricted research grant of $75,000. The program is open to academic institutions in the states, districts, and territories of the United States that grant a bachelor's or master's degree in the chemical sciences, including biochemistry, materials chemistry, and chemical engineering. Nominees must hold a full-time tenure-track academic appointment; be beyond the fourth and not after the twelfth year of their independent academic careers; and be engaged in research and teaching primarily with undergraduates. For complete program guidelines and nomination instructions, see the Dreyfus Foundation website: http://dreyfus.org/awards/camille_dreyfus_teacher_award.shtml
Rolling The Simons Foundation invites Letters of Intent for its new Targeted Grants in Mathematics and Physical Sciences program, intended to support high-risk projects of exceptional promise and scientific importance on a case-by-case basis. For projects with principal investigators at different institutions, the LOI should be submitted by the lead PI and his/her institution. Applicants will be notified within two months of the submission of the LOI. See the Simons Foundation website for complete program guidelines and application instructions: https://www.simonsfoundation.org/funding/funding-opportunities/mathematics-physical-sciences/targeted-grants-in-mps/
Rolling The Alfred P. Sloan Foundation believes that a carefully reasoned and systematic understanding of the forces of nature and society, when applied inventively and wisely, can lead to a better world for all. The Foundation makes grants to support original research and broad-based education related to science, technology, and economic performance; and to improve the quality of American life. The Foundation is unique in its focus on science, technology, and economic institutions. It believes the scholars and practitioners who work in these fields are chief drivers of the nation’s health and prosperity. In each grant program, the Foundation seeks proposals for original projects led by outstanding individuals or teams.
The Alfred P. Sloan Foundation is interested in projects that it expects will result in a strong benefit to society, and for which funding from the private sector, the government, or other foundations is not widely available. For areas of interest and application instructions, visit the Sloan Foundation online: http://www.sloan.org/major-program-areas/?L=0%3FcHash%3D3abefb807773927e5a962594e662c143
SOME UPCOMING DEADLINES FOR EXTERNAL FUNDING
ARTS, HUMANITIES AND SOCIAL SCIENCES
DECEMBER 9 The Mid Atlantic Arts Foundation is accepting applications for its On Screen/In Person Program, which provides opportunities for independent filmmakers to tour the mid-Atlantic region with their recent films with the aim of fostering greater understanding and appreciation of their work through direct audience engagement. Six films and their creators are selected for the program annually. Each tour engagement includes a public screening, a pre- or post-screening discussion with the visiting filmmaker, and a community activity collaboratively developed by the filmmaker and the local host site that provides greater appreciation for the filmmaker's work and the art of film. Nonprofit venues and arts organizations in the mid-Atlantic region apply to partner with MAAF and serve as host sites for the touring filmmakers. Each filmmaker is scheduled to visit between five and eight host sites and tour for approximately two weeks during one of the months the program is active. All travel expenses are paid by MAAF. In addition, a $200 per diem for each calendar day the filmmaker is on tour will be provided by the foundation to cover accommodations, food, and miscellaneous travel costs, along with a $400 stipend from each host site/screening engagement. The program is open to filmmakers from across the United States. Animation, documentary, experimental, and narrative works are eligible for consideration. Organizations accepted as host sites are invited to participate in the film selection process. See the MAAF website for complete program guidelines and application instructions: http://www.midatlanticarts.org/grants-programs/grants-for-artists/#on-screen-in-person
DECEMBER 15 The Institute for Critical Social Inquiry (ICSI) at The New School for Social Research in Manhattan invites applications for its 2017 Summer Institute, due December 15, 2016. ICSI offers faculty and advanced graduate students from around the world the opportunity to spend a week on The New School’s Greenwich Village campus, working closely with distinguished thinkers in contemporary social inquiry. Fellows join one of three seminars: for 2017, these are 1) K. Anthony Appiah on “The Cosmopolitan Nationalism of W.E.B. DuBois,” 2) David Harvey on “Marx and Capital: The Book, the Concept, the History,” and 3) Michael Taussig on “Thought-Images, Body and Mimesis in Walter Benjamin.” In these week-long seminars, “intellectual inquiry is joined with attention to pressing political concerns to cultivate styles of thinking that address the disparate and unequal conditions in which we live today.” For details and application instructions, please visit ICSI online: http://www.criticalsocialinquiry.org/apply
JANUARY 9, 2017 (letters of inquiry) The Russell Sage Foundation dedicates itself to strengthening the methods, data, knowledge, and theoretical core of the social sciences as a means of diagnosing social problems and improving social policies. The foundation’s program on Social Inequality supports research on the social, economic, political, and labor market consequences of rising economic inequalities in the United States. Priority will be given to projects that use innovative data or other methodologies to address important questions about inequality. Examples of the kinds of topics that are of interest include, but are not limited to, economic well-being, equality of opportunity, and intergenerational mobility; the political process and the resulting policies; psychological and/or cultural change; education; labor markets; child development and child outcomes; neighborhoods and communities; families, family structure, and family formation; and other forms of inequality. The foundation encourages methodological variety, but all proposals should have well-developed conceptual frameworks and research designs, and must be investigator-initiated. Analytical models should be specified and research questions and hypotheses should be clearly stated. Awards are available for research assistance, data acquisition, data analysis, and investigator time for conducting research and writing up results. Letters of Inquiry must be received no later than January 9, 2017. Upon review, select applicants will be invited to submit full proposals. For complete program guidelines, application instructions, and an FAQ, visit the Russell Sage website: http://www.russellsage.org/research/funding/social-inequality
JANUARY 11, 2017 NEH Digital Humanities Advancement Grants (DHAG)support digital projects throughout their lifecycles, from early start-up phases through implementation and long-term sustainability. Experimentation, reuse, and extensibility are hallmarks of this grant category, leading to innovative work that can scale to enhance research, teaching, and public programming in the humanities. This program combines the former Digital Humanities Start-Up Grants and Digital Humanities Implementation Grants programs; the combined program is offered twice per year. Proposals are welcome for digital initiatives in any area of the humanities. Through a special partnership, the Institute of Museum and Library Services (IMLS) anticipates providing additional funding to this program to encourage innovative collaborations between museum or library professionals and humanities professionals to advance preservation of, access to, use of, and engagement with digital collections and services. Through this partnership, IMLS and NEH may jointly fund some DHAG projects that involve collaborations with museums and/or libraries. For full guidelines, visit NEH online at https://www.neh.gov/grants/odh/digital-humanities-advancement-grants
Many NEH funding opportunities are now open! Check out the list at https://www.neh.gov/grants
APRIL 21, 2017 The Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, and Transgender Studies Department at Yale University is inviting applications for the Yale LGBT Studies Research Fellowship. The annual fellowship is designed to provide access to Yale resources in LGBT studies to a scholar who lives outside the greater New Haven, Connecticut, area. The program supports scholars from any field interested in pursuing research in lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, and/or queer studies using faculty resources, manuscript archives, and library collections available at Yale. The one-month fellowship, which must be taken up between September 1, 2017, and April 30, 2018, provides an award of $4,000 to pay for travel to and from New Haven and act as a living allowance. The fellowship recipient is expected to be in residence for a minimum of twenty days during the period of his or her award. Graduate students conducting dissertation research, independent scholars, and all faculty are invited to apply. Scholars residing within a hundred miles of New Haven are ineligible. For complete program guidelines and application instructions, see the Yale LGBT studies website: http://lgbts.yale.edu/research
AUGUST 21, 2017 (letters of inquiry) The Russell Sage Foundation is accepting applications for its Social, Economic and Political Effects of the Affordable Care Act Program. The program supports innovative social science research on the social, economic, and political effects of the Affordable Care Act. The foundation is especially interested in funding analyses that address important questions about the effects of the reform on outcomes such as financial security and family economic well-being, labor supply and demand, participation in other public programs, family and children's outcomes, and differential effects by age, race, ethnicity, nativity, or disability status. The foundation also is interested in research that examines the political effects of the implementation of the new law, including changes in views about government, support for future government policy changes, or the impact on policy development outside of health care. Funding is available for secondary analysis of data or for original data collection. Projects that propose novel uses of existing data and projects that propose to analyze newly available or underutilized data are welcome. The foundation will not fund research on the effects of the ACA on healthcare delivery or health outcomes (e.g., barriers to implementation, changes in the quality of care and health status, or trends in enrollment and affordability), as other funders already do that. Grant requests are limited to no more than a two-year period, with a maximum of $150,000 (including overhead) per project. LOIs must be received no later than August 21, 2017. Upon review, selected applicants will be invited to submit a full application that must be returned no later than November 15, 2017. http://www.russellsage.org/research/funding/affordable-care-act
Rolling Mellon Slavic Studies Initiative Russian, East European, and Central Asian studies are the focus of this joint publishing initiative supported by The Andrew W. Mellon Foundation in offered in partnership with Northwestern, Pittsburgh, and Wisconsin university presses. Northwestern seeks studies of Slavic literature, art, and culture; Pittsburgh is looking for projects in the social, political, environmental, urban, and cultural history of the former Soviet Union, Eastern Europe, and Central Asia; Wisconsin is especially interested in cultural and intellectual history, literary and film studies, anthropology, and human rights, with a focus on Russia and Eastern Europe. For program details, please visit: http://www.mellonslavicstudies.org/submissions.htm
Questions about funding for research and scholarship? Contact us:
Judith Dollenmayer (5376, judollenmayer), Associate Director, Corporate, Foundation & Government Relations
Katherine Hite (7661, kahite), Professor of Political Science & Faculty Director of Research Development
Gary Hohenberger (7092, gahohenberger), Director, Corporate, Foundation & Government Relations
Lori McElduff (5490, lomcelduff), Grants Office Specialist
Patricia Pritchard (5893, papritchard), Director, Grants Accounting
Amanda Thornton (5309, amthornton), Director, Grants Administration
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