Call for Proposals: Provost’s Global Faculty Awards 2020-21

Award Description

The purpose of the Provost’s Global Faculty Awards funding is to seed and enhance lasting collaborative projects and partnerships between University of Chicago faculty and their peers around the world. In keeping with the University's culture of valuing powerful ideas regardless of their origin, the University seeks out and encourages opportunities for its scholars and their international counterparts to explore new ideas and approaches together. By facilitating sustained and complex cross-cultural and interdisciplinary dialogues, this funding aims to help the University community and those with whom they engage to develop innovative approaches to address topics of interest in both their academic fields and their communities while establishing lasting working relationships between both individual researchers and institutions.

The University of Chicago will entertain proposals for activities organized around three broad and intersecting areas of scholarship, recognizing that some activities will not fit squarely in any single category and may involve more than one of these areas:

• Business, Economics, Law, and Policy
• Culture, Society, Religion, and the Arts
• Science, Energy, Medicine, and Public Health

Proposals are solicited for the following types of projects:

• Conferences and workshops to promote the sharing of ideas among scholars/researchers, policymakers, and business leaders from China, the United States, and beyond, including planning and brainstorming workshops to facilitate the development of grant proposals for collaborative international projects;
• Collaborative research projects involving data collection or analysis related to China, including comparative research with other parts of the world;
• Lectures and events (including arts programs) to engage scholars, alumni, and the public
• Residencies and fellowships for faculty or graduate students conducting short-term research in China;
• Research-oriented graduate internships in China. Faculty supervision/direction is required for each intern; and
• Faculty and student initiatives that require no funding but would benefit from logistical and staff support in the region.

Proposals that include more than one area of scholarship or joint proposals for projects across the University’s Centers in Delhi, Beijing, and Paris and the campus in Hong Kong are welcome.

Examples of previously funded projects can be found at https://www.uchicago.cn/events/project-awards-summary-2019-20/. The faculty director and members of the faculty steering committee may also be consulted in formulating proposals; their names and specialties are listed at https://www.uchicago.cn/about-us/faculty-steering-committee/. Prospective applicants are also encouraged to consult with UChicago Global staff regarding the substance of the proposal at global@uchicago.edu.

 

Proposal Format

All proposals should be submitted via the UChicago Funding Portal.

Each proposal should include:

• Project title
• Academic theme (from among the 3 listed above)
• Names, affiliations, and CVs of the PI, co-PI(s), and key collaborators from partner institutions
• Overview of proposed participants
• Brief abstract (limit: 250 words), which will appear on the UChicago Global website as a description of your project for a general audience
• Project narrative (limit: 3000 words) discussing your project’s aims, significance, rationale, and context within existing research initiatives (i.e., is this a smaller component of a larger project?)
• Discussion of potential for future collaborations or activities that will arise from this project
• Any additional funding sources applied for, with amounts requested and received for this project
• Estimated timeline for project activities
• Proposed budget

Budget templates are provided as part of the submission process in the portal and include estimates of location-specific costs for common expense types. Cost sharing with local partners and collaborating institutions is strongly preferred. Travel support is primarily intended for support of UChicago investigators and their counterparts in the region. If you will use the Center in Beijing as a venue for your activities, there is no additional cost to using the space.

Please note that the Provost’s Global Faculty Awards will not cover the following items:

• Economy plus, business, or first-class airfare (except when included in the original budget, with dean’s approval for medical purposes in advance)
• Honoraria for speakers, participants, or University employees
• Faculty salary support
• Any items/activities not related to the proposed project

Finally, please note that limited resources may require the Beijing Faculty Steering Committee to award less than is requested for some proposals, and as a general rule the Committee does not award more than USD $30,000 to any one project.

 

Eligibility

Proposals may originate from teams of collaborators in any discipline but the principal investigator must be a current academic appointee (tenure-track faculty or Other Academic Appointee) at the University of Chicago at the time that the award is granted and throughout the funding period. Current members of the Beijing Faculty Steering Committee are eligible to apply, provided that they recuse themselves during the review and voting on their proposal. Proposals including student activities must be led and submitted by faculty members directly supervising the students.

 

Award Timeline

Call for proposals: November 4, 2019 – January 15, 2020

Funding coverage period: 1 July 2020-30 June 2021

Please note that unused funds do not roll over to the following academic year. All expenses must be both incurred and reconciled prior to the end of the funded period.

 

Proposal Selection and Award Administration

Proposals will be reviewed and ranked by the Beijing Faculty Steering Committee using the following parameters:

• Originality and intellectual significance
• Extent of collaboration with regional partners
• Project design and likelihood of success
• Project budget (reasonability of costs)
• Benefit of support from the Center in Beijing
• Project impact on the University of Chicago community and regional partners in China

Award notices will be sent by mid-March 2020. Once awarded, Center in Beijing staff will provide direct assistance in planning and managing project logistics, communications, and facilities support. They will also work directly with awardees on financial and budgetary processes, including providing guidance and recommendations, processing local payments as needed, and assisting with submitting all incurred costs for reimbursement.

 

Reporting

Awardees must submit a report assessing the projects’ success and impact after their completion. Reports must be received by the end of the fiscal year for which the funding was awarded (June 30, 2021), or earlier if preferred.

End-of-year reporting will be submitted via the funding portal and should include:

• A brief summary of any research, events, or other activities supported by the Provost’s Global Faculty Awards funding for 2020-21
• An update on new partnerships or collaborations formed during the course of the project
• Any media attention, follow-up funding, applied tools, or publications resulting from the project
• Any additional next steps for further engagement

 

Further Guidance

For information about past and upcoming activities at the Center in Beijing, please visit our website at https://www.uchicago.cn/. Faculty and researchers receiving this invitation are encouraged to distribute this call for proposals to other interested members of the UChicago community.  If you require any additional guidance, please feel free to reach out to us at global@uchicago.edu.