XIV. Funding for Professional Activities

A. TRAVEL AND RESEARCH

The College will provide faculty members with Hamilton Annual Research and Travel (HART) funds to support their professional travel and scholarly/creative work. Funds may be used to directly support pedagogical and scholarly or creative activities that promote a faculty member’s intellectual enrichment and allow you to grow as a teacher-scholar. These funds can be used to support attendance at professional conferences or other travel related to one’s research. Unspent HART funds at the end of the fiscal year will not roll over to the subsequent year. HART funds can be used during periodic leaves and do not affect eligibility for Grants Activity Fund or Gertrude F. Bristol sabbatical support.  Faculty members who anticipate that their research and conference/travel costs will exceed the $4,000 HART allotment may seek supplemental funding through the Faculty Teacher-Scholar Award Program. Funding should be used in accordance with our Spending Guidelines. 

B. FUNDS FOR FACULTY GRANT PROPOSALS

The Dean of Faculty office has a Director of Sponsored Program Grants, Jeff Ritchie, as well as an annual grant activity budget for support of individual faculty (as opposed to institutional) grant proposals to external grant agencies. The goal of the Director and the Fund is to encourage proposal development, strengthen submissions, demonstrate institutional support for proposed activities, and increase funding rates. The fund offers several broad categories of support:

1. Proposal development support

   1. Proposal-writing workshop attendance

   2. Consultations and collaborations on proposal development.

   3. Preliminary data collection and analysis (may include stipends).

2. Supplemental salary

   1. Supplemental salary and benefits (“top-up”) on external awards of partial support for personal leaves for professional activity or one-year periodic leaves (e.g., NEH, NEA fellowships).

3. Cost-sharing

   1. Up to 30% (unless agency-specified otherwise) in cost-sharing on specific non-salary expenses/ requests (e.g., equipment, supplies, travel).

4. Indirect costs redirection

   1. For grants that reimburse the college for indirect costs (e.g., NSF and NIH grants with salary and wages), the equivalent of 10% of those costs may be requested for project/ grant development-related (non-salary) expenses.

5. Internal project awards

   1. For individuals who have demonstrated “strenuous effort” in seeking grant support but not secured funding, despite strong proposal submissions, substantial support may be provided towards moving the proposed project forward.

Application for any of the above should be made well in advance of proposal deadlines to your Associate Dean of Faculty, from whom more details are available. Overall support for a particular project will be limited, and so a plan for proposal development, pre-award commitments, and post-award support should be considered together.