Deadline: April 7, 2025
The Dean’s office in the School of the Arts is pleased to announce the call for applications for 2025 Summer Research Grants. These funds are to support summer research in two categories. Notification can be expected by May 9, 2025.
Category I Educational
Summer Educational Research Grants unite undergraduate education and faculty by supporting projects that include opportunities for undergraduate students to work as research/studio assistants. Successful proposals must discuss how the project will increase the student researcher’s knowledge, skills and experience.
Category II General
General Summer Research Grants support a broad range of research for faculty and can be used to initiate a short-term summer project, fund a discrete sub-section of an existing or ongoing project, or complete a project already begun. This category does not allow for any payment to contractors, studio assistants, or editors.
Eligibility: All full-time tenure-track, tenured and term faculty are invited to submit applications for a grant in the amount of $3,000 in either category (but not both). This includes faculty at the rank of assistant, associate, or full professor. Please note: Faculty on waiver appointments are not eligible for these programs.
Evaluation of proposals in both categories will focus on the quality of the project and the significance of the contribution that the proposed project will make to thought and knowledge in the applicant’s field via peer-reviewed publication, exhibition, or performance (broadly defined) and/or potential for external funding. Consideration will be given to projects that will advance the applicants’ path to tenure and promotion and the likelihood that the applicant will complete the project (or a designated sub-section of a larger project) during the summer of the award.
Evaluation of Summer Educational Research Grant proposals will focus additionally on how projects address and account for the quality of the student research experience.
Awards are subject to the following criteria:
- -It is understood that the Dean’s Office will be notified no later than June 6, 2025 if a faculty member awarded a Summer Research Grant declines or becomes ineligible to receive the grant.
- -Grant awards are to support research. Awards are not intended for preparation of teaching materials that will be required by the applicant in the performance of normal teaching duties. Additionally, awards are not intended to support research leading to a graduate degree.
- -Faculty may receive Summer Research Grant support for no more than two consecutive years; they regain eligibility after a summer without support.
- -Grant recipients may accept other grants for project expenses not covered by VCUarts’s Summer Research Grant.
- -Grant recipients are expected to devote at least three consecutive weeks of the summer in which the funds are awarded to the proposed research project. They may receive salary for summer teaching or summer administrative duties provided that the commensurate work occupies no more than eight consecutive weeks during the summer of the award.
- -Award recipients will be expected to report in writing to the Dean’s Office, by October 1, 2025 (approximately 30 days from the end of the grant period on August 31), on the progress achieved toward the completion of the proposed project. Failure to submit a final report on time will jeopardize future funding.
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Questions? Email the Arts Research team at artsresearch@vcu.edu.