COLA RESEARCH FUNDS
Faculty Funding
Graduate Student Funding
COLA Investment Fund for the Social Sciences and the Humanities
Purpose
The College of Liberal Arts (COLA) administers two funding sources to support COLA faculty members engaged in scholarship in the broad areas of the humanities and the social sciences. COLA manages the Humanities Fund and the Social Sciences Fund, each at $50,000 per year, to support applications from COLA faculty over the course of the academic year. These sources are intended to help faculty cover lower-level expenses that arise over the course of a project (e.g., licensing fees, archive and field travel, equipment), not the larger-scale expenses addressed through COLA’s Littlefield and Ransom Faculty Fellowships or other various programs. As such, they should not serve as the sole or primary funder for a project, cannot substitute for other sources of internal funding, and are best employed in conjunction with external funding. The goal is to help COLA faculty start or complete projects in the face of unanticipated or unbudgeted but necessary expenses.
Awards
Requests for funding are typically limited to a maximum of $3,000 in any given year.
Applications will be accepted—and funding decisions made—on a rolling basis.
Information on ineligible expenses is listed below.
Although not required, the following considerations may be used to prioritize applications:
Use of the award to supplement past or current external funding or as a foundation for future proposals for external funding
Collaborative and especially interdisciplinary projects
Projects involving graduate or undergraduate students in the scholarship
Eligibility
All tenure-track and professional-track faculty with Principal Investigator status and with primary appointments in COLA are eligible to apply, with the following conditions:
Receipt of funding is limited to once per academic year and no more than three times in any five-year period.
After receipt, recipients are not eligible to re-apply for future funding for the same project.
Faculty with endowed chairs or professorships or who have other discretionary research funds (e.g., startup funds granted by COLA) are not eligible to apply.
Faculty cannot apply for expenses on projects that have received funding from other internal funding initiatives from COLA or UT (e.g., the Littlefield and Ransom Fellowships, Humanities Research Awards, Subvention Grants, Research and Creative Grants, Special Research Grants, etc.).
Application process:
At this Qualtrics Application link, eligible faculty can submit their applications to be considered for the COLA Investment Fund.
The application requires:
Project title
Project abstract (250 words or less)
Description of the need for funding
Proposed project start and end dates
Total requested amount and itemized budget details (Note: Any changes to the approved budget will require the Research Dean’s approval.)
Other external funding received, pending, and future requests
Signature of applicant that the application is not recycled and will not be recycled from other internal initiatives that were not funded.
Other Considerations
Funds most commonly will be distributed as a reimbursement by the faculty member’s departmental staff.
Awardees will be responsible for documenting to COLA the distribution of the funds and reporting on promised outcomes by the end of the project period.
Receipt of funding comes with the agreement that COLA may feature awardee’s projects on their websites and/or in communications about institutional investments in humanities and social science scholarship.
Awardees may be asked to review future applications to the program.
Ineligible Expenses
Researcher’s salary or fringe benefits
Any costs related to dissemination of the completed research
General-purpose computer equipment or software (e.g., laptops, Microsoft Word, etc.)
Travel or registration costs for professional conferences, meetings, or symposia
Professional membership fees
Entertainment expenses
Office supplies unless specifically required for the proposed project
Contact: Please direct questions about this program to the COLA Research Support Office at laresearch@austin.utexas.edu.
Liberal Arts Subvention Grants
The College of Liberal Arts created the Subvention Grant opportunity to support the publication of books by COLA faculty and students. Recognizing the changing landscape of academic publishing, COLA expanded this program in 2022 to provide support for faculty and students publishing articles in high-impact, peer-reviewed journals that have publication fees. In both cases, funds are paid directly to the publisher, and authors may not be reimbursed from the account. If awarded support, the author and publisher must agree to acknowledge the College of Liberal Arts at the University of Texas at Austin for the subvention grant.
For more information, please download the COLA Subvention Grant Guidelines and COLA Subvention Grant Application.
Contact: For questions, contact Liberal Arts Research Support Office at laresearch@austin.utexas.edu.
COLA Graduate Student External Award Supplement Fund
Contact: Please contact Jessica Luhn, Assistant Director for Graduate Education, with any questions.
Purpose
The College of Liberal Arts (COLA) has created a fund to support COLA graduate students who obtain large (usually $15,000 or more), competitive, prestigious external fellowships to support their degree work and dissertations in the broad areas of the humanities and social sciences. This fund is specifically intended to defray health insurance and tuition costs for graduate students when their external fellowships do not cover these costs, and at times, to assist the student getting to the COLA PhD graduate student minimum funding level (currently $20K in fall/spring). Please note that we require Department support as part of this request and will assess what contribution the Department or home program is also providing the student. It cannot substitute for other sources of internal funding, including the Dean’s Prestigious Fellowship Supplement offered by the Graduate School. As such, graduate advisers and graduate coordinators should first seek the Dean’s Prestigious Fellowship Supplement, which awards students up to $1,000 and entitles them to in-state tuition. In cases where the student wishes to enroll in only 3 semester credit hours and full-time enrollment is not required by the funder, this expectation may be waived. The goal is to support COLA graduate student fellowship-seeking and research activity and to enable timely degree completion.
Awards and Eligibility
1. COLA will fund the Graduate Student External Award Supplement Fund at $50,000 per year, to support applications from COLA graduate students over the course of the academic year.
2. Only one request for supplemental funding (not to exceed amount of health insurance and/or tuition) per student is allowed in any given year, and only two requests are allowed over any three-year period.
3. All COLA graduate units will eligible to apply for their graduate students, with the following conditions:
Funds are meant to cover the cost of COLA tuition and/or student health insurance during the duration of a prestigious external fellowship
Students should be within six years of their current COLA degree program at the time of receipt of the award.
MA students are eligible to apply, but FLAS fellowships are excluded from this fund. The College is working on a separate solution to address FLAS insurance costs.
4. Applications submitted by the graduate advisor or graduate coordinator (on behalf of the student) will be accepted—and funding decisions made—on a rolling basis.
5. Departments should also be providing some funding or supplemental support to the graduate student.
6. Award amounts will be determined by need and availability of funds.
Application process:
At this link, departmental graduate advisors or coordinators must submit applications on behalf of the student via Qualtrics survey and will upload a copy of the external funding offer to UTBox. (UTBox link is also within the Qualtrics application.)
The application requires:
Department Information, including Graduate Advisor or Graduate Coordinator name and email
Graduate student name, EID, and email
Graduate student entry cohort
External Fellowship Award Type/Name
Dissertation or research project title
Dissertation or research project abstract (250 words or less)
Department contribution and/or provided student support
Funding request type (tuition and/or insurance) and amount(s)
Proposed Academic Year and Semester(s)
List department contribution and/or other support (e.g., OGS Dean’s Prestigious Fellowship Supplement) requested or received for the project.
Copy of the student’s external award letter uploaded to UTBox.
Signature of Graduate Advisor or Coordinator
Other Considerations
Funds distributed for tuition may be applied directly to the student’s fee bill.
Awardees will be responsible for reporting on degree progress by the end of the specified period.
Receipt of funding comes with the agreement that COLA may feature awardee’s projects on its website and/or in communications about institutional investments in humanities and social science scholarship.