Office of Sponsored Research and Foundation Relations News for Grantseekers

Dear Colleagues,

As we welcome in the new year, and the second half of the academic year, we want to pause and celebrate your efforts! FY24 to date, staff and faculty on campus have submitted 29 proposals for external grant funding and 13 applications have already been funded. We anticipate more of these proposals being funded as decisions are made over the coming months. Looking back at FY23, 51 grant proposals were submitted through the College to external funders and 31 projects were awarded new funding. We are grateful for all of this exciting grant activity and look forward to working with you in the coming year!

While not all proposals are funded, the work that goes into developing a project and seeking external grant funding represents noteworthy intellectual and programmatic excitement on campus. We believe that all proposal development lays the groundwork for future success. It is a process of distilling your concept, defining the parameters of your project, discussing your ideas with potential collaborators, peers and program officers, and ultimately, presenting a clarified vision and a path toward achieving your goals.

In support of Amherst’s research culture, this fall we offered two workshops, one focused on NSF proposals, using the NSF LEAPS-MPS as an example, and one focused on popular fellowships in the Arts, Humanities, and Qualitative Social Sciences. Thank you to all who attended, with particular gratitude to our faculty panelists. We look forward to offering more workshops this spring, including a virtual workshop on our funding database GrantForward to be held on January 23rd.

View the full newsletter for events, upcoming deadlines and more.

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• Explore awards available in the 2025-26 competition.
• Eligibility Requirements
• Application Steps and Guidance
• Review Criteria
• Application and Review Timeline

Fulbright U.S. Scholar Program: February 2024 Events and Resources Newsletter

Monday January 22, 2024, 10:30-3pm

Learn how to use grants to gain control over your scholarly career. This workshop covers how to find funding targets, how to develop grant ideas, and the mechanics of fundable grants. 

Schedule: 10:30am-12pm Keynote; 12-1pm Lunch; 1-3pm Write On Site. 

Pre-registration is required at the link below. The Write On Site session is designed for faculty members; the keynote is open to all. Registration is free of charge. This session is sponsored by the Mount Holyoke College Grants Office, Five Colleges Inc., and the Mount Holyoke Office of the Provost, and Dean of Faculty.

Click here to register.

Applications Due January 5, 2024

For faculty members looking for funding to support their travel, please note the following opportunity.

As outlined in the letter from the Foundation (attached below), grants are provided to faculty members, "to enable them to study abroad or at some location or locations other than that which they are most closely associated. The aim is to stimulate and broaden the minds of teachers so as to improve and enhance the quality of their instruction."  Funding should be used for travel and associated expenses, such as lodging and meals. Grants from the Foundation average around $6,000.  Applicants are required to provide a three page outline of the project or study program, plus two letters of recommendation. Please review full application details in the attached, along with eligibility criteria.

Application Procedure

Applicants will submit their materials to the Foundation directly via email, however, the Foundation requires that the College administers the grant. Therefore, you will need to follow pre-submission review and approval processes. Given the due date, applicants should notify the OSRFR of your intent to apply by December 15. We encourage you to reach out sooner with any questions or to let us know of your interest in applying.

In October 2023, the OSRFR will offer two faculty development workshops. Please RSVP to join us for lunch and to learn more about some of the most popular funding opportunities amongst Amherst College faculty members.

Talking Grants - Broad overview of NSF Proposals using NSF LEAPS-MPS as a guide

October 5, 12-1pm in Porter Lounge

NSF is the most popular federal funder at Amherst College. Join us for a lunch and a walkthrough of the standard NSF requirements, as well as a brief description of some common NSF opportunities. We will discuss the documents that NSF will need, the types of support our office can provide, and some insight into the NSF Review process. The NSF LEAPS-MPS proposal will be used as a guide for the walkthrough. A recent awardee of a NSF award will briefly speak to their experience submitting a proposal. There will be time available at the end to ask any questions relating to sponsored research at Amherst College. Please RSVP so that we have an accurate estimate for our lunch count.

Talking Fellowships: Faculty Lunch and Panel Discussion - Popular Fellowships in the Arts, Humanities and Qualitative Social Sciences

October 16, 12-1pm, CHI Seminar Room with Faculty Panel Participants: Katriana Karkazis, Olufemi Vaughan, and Kiara Vigil 

Join us for lunch to learn more about popular fellowship opportunities and what resources are available from OSRFR to help you along the way. A panel of three faculty who have received fellowship awards will discuss their experience as applicants and funded researchers and answer your questions. This workshop is intended to make faculty members aware of the opportunities and resources available to them and to highlight and support the research culture of Amherst. Please RSVP so that we have an accurate estimate for our lunch count.

The Office of Sponsored Research and Foundation Relations is launching a quarterly newsletter. We look forward to sharing regular updates including funding opportunities, upcoming deadlines, important policy changes, and news of grant-related events and resources. 

If you are an active grantseeker or simply curious to know more about the opportunities available and how to engage with our office, you won’t want to miss out on future editions of the OSRFR newsletter!  Please see our September edition below and sign up to be added to our mailing list.

September 2023 OSRFR Newsletter.pdf

Sign up for our Quarterly Newsletter

Amherst College has a subscription to GrantForward's funding opportunities database, which anyone with an amherst.edu address can access. Choose the "Log In" link and then re-set your password. To learn more about GrantForward's features, checking out its substantial support resources.

Amherst faculty are welcome to set up a GrantForward profile, which will permit them to share their research interests (if they wish), save searches, and "bookmark" recurring grant and fellowship awards for a future year.

Questions? Contact the Grants Office. 

The Americal Council of Learned Societies released upcoming fellowship and grant competition deadlines. Deadlines vary per competition, beginning with the ACLS Open Access Book Prize, (nominees are due on September 1), and the ACLS Fellowships for untenured scholars (who earned the PhD within eight years of the application deadline), for which applications are due on September 28. Visit their website for a full listing and reach out to the Office of Sponsored Research and Foundation Relations if you are interesetd in exploring an application.

The National Endowment for the Humanities (NEH) has invited nominations for its 2023 Summer Stipends Program.

This program aims to stimulate new research in the humanities and its publication.  The program works to accomplish this goal by providing small awards to individuals pursuing advanced research that is of value to humanities scholars and general audiences.  These stipends can support projects at any stage of development, but are most effective for early-stage research and late-stage writing. 

Successful applicants receive $6,000 for work on a humanities project.  Recipients must work full time on their projects for two consecutive months and may hold other research grants supporting the same project during this time.  Summer stipends normally support work carried out during the summer months, but arrangements can be made for other times of the year.

Please submit an electronic version of your proposal along with an updated, two-page curriculum vitae to Janet Tobin Friday, September 1, 2023, so the Faculty Executive Committee can determine whom to recommend.  For those nominated, the NEH deadline for the full application, which is submitted electronically, is Wednesday, September 20, 2023.

Tenure-track and tenured faculty must be nominated by the college to apply for a summer stipend from the NEH; Amherst is permitted to nominate up to two faculty each year. Non-tenure-track faculty, visitors, and staff who will not be teaching during the 2023–2024 academic year are eligible to apply without nomination.

On May 17, 2023, at 2:00 P.M. EST, the NEH hosted a webinar describing the application and nomination processes and offering application writing tips.  Detailed guidelines, links to sample proposals and program webinars, and NEH-required forms are available on the NEH website. 

Please contact Michael Stein in the Office of Sponsored Research and Foundation Relations for more information and tips for preparing a competitive NEH proposal. 

NIH released an interactive infographic to help researchers explore different programs by career stage. The tool includes useful tips, and helps new researchers better understand the lingo of NIH funding: https://researchtraining.nih.gov/career-path.

The Office of Sponosored Research and Foundation Relations can also help you identify opportunities that may be a good fit for your research project. Reach out with your ideas and questions.

The OSRFR is announcing a new platform for faculty and staff grantseekers to acquire internal approvals and complete their Financial Conflict of Interest declaration. Our previous platform, Grantslink, is discontinued. While we develop a more permanent replacement, an interim set of forms (routed using Docusign) are in place. 

Please note that all college faculty and staff seeking an external grant or fellowship that will be processed through that College are required to complete these forms as an essential part of the pre-submission review and approval process.  More information can be found here: Institutional Review and Approval. Please reach out to your contact in the OSRFR with any questions (faculty in STEM who are seeking federal funding should contact Jamin Weeks; all others should contact Michael Stein).

As always, the OSRFR asks that if you are planning to submit a grant or fellowship proposal within the next six months, that you contact us as soon as possible.  The Financial Conflict of Interest and Pre-Submission Review forms should be filled out at least eight to ten business days prior to the submission deadline, and the final Institutional review should be requested at least five business days prior to the submission deadline.

We look forward to assisting you with your grant application.