Skip to content

Enhanced Travel Awards

Please note: Due to the ongoing fiscal uncertainty triggered by COVID-19, we do not yet know our operating budget for FY22. At this point in time, we have postponed all CCAS internal competitions, and will inform all PIs via the CCAS Research Update when the situation becomes more clear.


Program Description

The CCAS Enhanced Travel Awards program, launched in spring 2014, is intended to facilitate increased faculty participation in conferences and research activities, especially those that might involve extensive travel. The dean’s office will be making 30 new CCAS Enhanced Travel Awards available annually, in the amount of $2,500 each.

The Enhanced Travel award process is changing to accommodate faculty who may have travel that falls outside of our previous funding period, or learn of travel opportunities outside of our previous application window.

We will now accept applications for the following:

Spring 2020 applications are meant to fund travel taking place July 1, 2020 - June 30, 2021 (due March 11, 2020).

Fall 2020 applications are meant to fund travel taking place January 1, 2021 - December 31, 2021 (due September 9, 2020).

Those who apply in Spring 2020 will not be eligible for the competition in Fall 2020. Faculty may only submit one application per calendar year January 1, 2020 - December 31, 2020 (not to be confused with academic year or fiscal year).

Up to 15 awards made per due date.

Up to $2,500 in funding per applicant.

Criteria:

Any regular faculty (either tenure-line faculty or contract faculty who have contractual responsibility for teaching, research and service) budgeted to CCAS may apply. Faculty holding a Dean’s Research Chair Award may not simultaneously hold an Enhanced Travel Award.

Submit application materials in one PDF file through InfoReady. Note that (2) the description of the proposed project and (3) the budget and justification are limited to one page in length each. The list of current and pending awards should detail all current external and internal funding whether directly related to project or not, so has no length limit. Pages should have at least 1” margins on all sides, and be no smaller than 11 point font. The file should be named in the format Travel_LastName.pdf, and contain the following items:

1. Faculty Name, Department, and Academic Rank

2. Limited to 1 page: Description of proposed project to be presented at a conference OR description of research project that involves extensive travel. It is essential that this:

  • justify how this conference presentation or research activity will enhance your research/scholarship and describe the expected outcome/product;
  • justify why this research/travel cannot be funded by other sources (especially important where the faculty member has existing intramural or extramural funding); and
  • EITHER, for conference travel:
    • detail the nature of the presentation to be supported (plenary / parallel; invited / contributed); and
    • why it is important to attend this specific conference.
  • OR for research travel:
    • explain the criticality of the travel to your scholarship/research.

3. No longer than 1 page: A brief itemized budget, including name, date, and location of conference to be attended OR place and time where research activities will be carried out.

4. A list of ALL current and pending intramural and extramural support, regardless of its relationship to the proposed travel, including award period, funding source, and title of award.

Review Process:

The applications will be reviewed by a committee of the CCAS Research Advisory Council, which consists of three faculty from each academic division. This committee will review application packages and make recommendations to the Dean.

Notification of Decisions:

The Dean will make all efforts to notify applicants of the funding decisions by May 2020 for Spring and November 2020 for Fall.

Assessment Criteria For Enhanced Scholarly Travel

a) For research travel: criticality and appropriateness of this specific travel to immediate research need - 30%

  • Travel is essential to the immediate progress of the PIs research.

AND / OR

  • Travel support is timely and essential in order to leverage other fellowships and / or opportunities afforded the PI to their fullest extent.

OR for conference travel: level of presentation and impact of travel - 30%

  • The conference selected is reasonable and appropriate for the planned research gains (e.g.. small specialist workshop for deepening and developing work or understanding in a new field, or broader high profile conference to publicize work, whole funding is under review, etc.)
  • The level of presentation is appropriate to the identified purpose and will give reasonable reputational gain for the PI / GW

b) Impact of travel on broader scholarly research - 30%

  • Travel need is placed in broader context of PIs research and scholarship.
  • Travel provides significant enhancement of scholarly reputation / research progress / possibility of funding success core to the broader program of faculty’s scholarship.

c) Justification of need for support (using information from the current and pending support list and the project narrative) - 25%

  • There is no other source of funding available

OR

  • This would be an extension of / complementary to existing sources of funding

d) Reasonableness of Budget - 15%

  • Is the budget reasonable and well justified?