Research Activity Award Fund
Each fiscal year, UK’s Executive Vice President for Research makes a Research Activity Award to each college dean. The Research Activity Award is 5% of the facilities and administration (F&A) costs (i.e., “indirects”) generated by grants awarded to College of Education.
If the college does not generate $1,000,000 in F&A an additional supplement from the Vice President for Research is added to the award. Awards are two years behind the present fiscal year. This award provides funding for supplemental faculty professional travel, graduate student professional travel and other research support items. Each year the amount available for faculty and student travel awards will be determined based on the size of the award to the college.
The College of Education Office of Research administers this award. Faculty and students may request supplemental funding for one trip per academic year. The following priorities will serve as the basis for honoring faculty members’ and graduate students’ requests for funds from the Research Activity Award. The following priorities are not in rank order, and exceptions are possible.
Priorities based on the individual’s rank/status and grant activities:
- Assistant professors in years after access to a start-up package or after a start-up package is depleted
- Associate and full professors who have submitted one or more grant proposals in the past three years or who currently have one or more active funded projects or had active project in the past 2 years.
- Graduate students requesting travel support to present their research at professional meetings. The student requesting the funding must be the presenting author.
Priorities based on the nature of the request:
- If the request includes funds from another source such as the individual’s travel allocation from the Dean’s Office, departmental funds, grant funds, or other funds, the request will receive favorable consideration.
- Travel requests to attend a professional conference, national or international should be for the purpose of presenting results of research.
- Partial matching funds for proposals to UK’s internal grant programs administered by the Vice President for Research are available.
- Travel to a professional meeting to receive a national or international award for research-related activities will receive priority.
- Requests for funds to purchase research materials, equipment, or supplies will be considered in light of available funds and likelihood that the research will lead to future grant proposals.
Priority to participate in Kentucky and National conferences:
- Requests to travel to Kentucky professional conferences and national conferences are encouraged. Given UK’s land grant mission and our university and college goals to improve the lives in Kentucky and the nation, proposals to present research in venues that serve our Commonwealth and the nation are strongly encouraged.
Application:
Requests for research support should be sent electronically via the Travel Award Submission Portal.
All Applicants:
- Identifying information: name, department. Students, please identify your degree program and advisor.
- Purpose of travel.
- A travel budget with the specific dollar amount requested; this includes a total and a breakdown of expense items. The request should indicate all other sources of funds committed to this request and clearly identify how much is requested from each source.
- For conference travel, include (a) complete name of conference, (b) an APA (or other appropriate format) format citation of the presentation, (c) location of the conference, (d) dates of the conference, and (e) documentation from the conference of acceptance of your paper.
- For research materials and other costs, a brief abstract describing the research project.
- Prior to using funds from the college research activity award account for travel, documentation must be provided that all other travel related funds have been expended including departmental, grant, and start-up funds.
Student Applicants:
- Students must provide a letter of support from a faculty member (can be sent by separate email).
Application Deadline: Funding requests must be received by the Associate Dean by the 15th of the month prior to travel. For example, if you are traveling in September the request for funding is due August 15.