Grants and Grantsmanship for M.A. and Ph.D. Students

Anne Stiles, Ph.D.

2/20/14

Today’s Agenda• Types of grants:

– Internal (SLU)• Departmental• College or University level

– External (not funded by SLU)• Conference travel & conference awards• Travel to archives • Grants for language study • Study abroad• NEH and NHC summer seminars • Dissertation fellowships• Postdocs

• Databases for Finding External Funding

• Grantsmanship– What funding agencies look for – Snowball effect – Persistence

Internal Grants

• SLU Departmental funding

• SLU funding at the College level: http://www.slu.edu/x32076.xml – Dissertation fellowships:

http://www.slu.edu/graduateeducation/employment-and-financial-support/fellowships/dissertation-fellowships

– Brennan awards: http://gsa.slu.edu/awards/brennan-recognition-awards

Conference Travel• Some conferences offer small grants to assist graduate students

with travel costs.

• Normally, you must be presenting a paper to apply (except at MLA, where having interviews is another criteria).

• Examples:

– MLA Travel Grants: https://www.mla.org/conv_travel_assist

– NAVSA Student Travel Grants: http://www.cla.purdue.edu/english/navsa/TravelGrantPrize

– The Nineteenth Century Studies Association Student Travel Grants: http://www.ncsaweb.net/AwardsandPrizes/tabid/94/Default.aspx

Conference Paper Awards• Some conferences offer awards for the best graduate student paper presented each year.

A few offer cash prizes. Even an honorable mention looks great on a CV.

• If you’re planning to present, why not apply? You may need to finish your paper a bit early in order to do so.

• NAVSA Graduate Prize: http://www.cla.purdue.edu/english/navsa/Prizes/GraduatePrize.shtml

• Midwest Victorian Studies Association William and Mary Burgan Prize: http://www.midwestvictorian.org/p/prizes.html

• INCS Susan Morgan Graduate Student Essay Prize: http://incs2014.org/graduate-students/ (prize includes a $500 award and publication in Nineteenth-Century Contexts)

• VISAWUS William H. Scheuerle Graduate Student Paper Award: http://www.visawus.org/?page_id=12

• If you are presenting at a conference NOT listed here, check the conference website for the possibility of prizes, travel grants, and even publishing opportunities. Smaller conferences in particular often lead to publications (conference volumes, special issues of journals, etc.)

Travel to Archives• Numerous archives fund short-term travel (weeks or months) on-site if you need to use their

resources for your dissertation. Some are highly competitive, others less so.

• The list below is just a small sample. If there is an archive you need to visit, see if they offer any funding to visiting graduate students.

• Examples:– The American Antiquarian Society (Worcester, MA): http://www.americanantiquarian.org/acafellowship.htm – The Clark Library (Los Angeles): http://www.c1718cs.ucla.edu/fellowships.htm – UCLA Special Collections Division: http://www.library.ucla.edu/special/james-sylvia-thayer-research-

fellowships – The Huntington Library (Pasadena): http://www.huntington.org/WebAssets/Templates/content.aspx?id=566– Harry Ransom Center Dissertation Fellowships (UT Austin; $1500):

http://www.hrc.utexas.edu/research/fellowships/application/– The College of Physicians of Philadelphia:

http://www.collegeofphysicians.org/library/wood-institute/travel-grants/ – Yale University Beinecke Library:

http://beinecke.library.yale.edu/programs-events/fellowship-program/visiting-graduate-student-summer-fellowships

– The New York Public Library: http://www.nypl.org/help/about-nypl/fellowships-institutes/short-term-research-fellowships

– The Newberry Library (Chicago): http://www.newberry.org/fellowships– The Osler Library (McGill University, Montreal): http://www.mcgill.ca/library/branches/osler/grant

Language Study Grants• DAAD (German Academic Exchange Service):

https://www.daad.org/scholarship

– The DAAD a range of grants to grad students who need to learn German for their scholarly work.

– It helps if you have intermediate German proficiency already.

– If you meet the above criteria, summer language study grants are fun & not hard to get.

– If accepted, you get to spend 1-2 months in Berlin, Munich, or another German city taking language classes. DAAD will pay for room and board.

– DAAD also offers opportunities for long-term study in Germany if you know the language reasonably well.

Study Abroad

• Fulbrights: http://us.fulbrightonline.org/#&panel1-2

– Provides long-term study abroad opportunities to graduate students and professors

– Fulbrights to some countries, like the UK, are extremely competitive. Other countries (for ex., Germany) are less so.

– A Fulbright could fund a year of study during grad school, or a postdoctoral fellowship year.

NEH Summer Seminars• Sessions on specific scholarly topics last 3-5 weeks and are led by a

leading researcher. Advanced graduate students are eligible to apply; so are professors.

• Those who are accepted get stipends to cover housing and living costs.

• These sessions are great ways to network and delve more deeply into a topic of interest. They also look great on a CV.

• National Endowment for the Humanities Summer Sessions (various locations): http://www.neh.gov/divisions/education/summer-programs

– This summer, there are sessions on Dickens, Emily Dickinson, the arts in WWI, and the American Civil War. The deadline is March 4.

– Make sure you look at the sessions for university and college teachers (high school teachers have a different list of options).

Dissertation Fellowships

• Very competitive

• More options are available if you are flexible about location.

• See Georgia’s list for some options. Here are a couple more: – The Philadelphia Library Company:

http://www.librarycompany.org/fellowships/dissertation.htm– Walter L. Arnstein Prize for Dissertation Research in Victorian

Studies ($1500): http://www.midwestvictorian.org/p/prizes.html– A Fulbright or DAAD grant can also be used as a dissertation

fellowship if you need to study abroad.

Postdocs• Once you get your Ph.D., don’t just apply to jobs.

• At the same time, you should apply to many different postdocs.

• Some postdocs are teaching appointments, but the best ones allow you free time to focus on research.

• They are highly competitive (for ex., I applied to 30 postdocs, and got one).

• So you need to build up a strong record of publication and grantsmanship now in order to better your chances.

• See Georgia’s list (handout) for examples of postdocs.

Grants Databases

• Duke University Funding Opportunities Database: https://researchfunding.duke.edu/– You can limit your search by discipline

• UCLA Grapes Database: http://www.gdnet.ucla.edu/grpinst.htm– The “search” function will help you find opportunities

close to your interests. – Some will be UC-specific, but many are not. – More options listed here than on your handout

Grantsmanship• What funding agencies look for:

– A project that will eventually lead to publication in some form (books, articles). If parts of it are published already, that usually helps.

– A project that is partially completed rather than purely hypothetical.

– A project that is realistic (i.e., the applicant has the skills to carry out the project within the allotted time frame).

– A project that fills a gap in existing scholarship and/or answers a practical need.

– Prose that is free of discipline-specific jargon (reviewers come from various disciplines).

– Prose that has been thoroughly proofread by two people – someone inside your discipline and someone outside your field. Your target audience: an intelligent non-expert.

– A project narrative that tells a good story. (This is why historians beat literary scholars, hands down, in sheer numbers of grants won. We must work to change this).

– A project narrative that is mindful of the parameters of the specific fellowship to which you are applying. Read directions VERY carefully and try to see what they’re looking for.

Grantsmanship

• What not to do:

– Write a proposal that doesn’t fit the parameters of the fellowship to which you are applying (read directions carefully).

– Forget to proofread

– Use lots of discipline-specific jargon and convoluted prose. (Writing confusing sentences does not make you sound smarter. Trust me on this).

– Give up. This is a numbers game. You have to try again and again to get grants, esp. at first, and rejection is completely normal.

The Snowball Effect• Your long-term grantsmanship strategy

• Start with small grants (language study grants, NEH seminars, travel grants to conferences and archives).

• Later on, start applying to longer-term grants such as dissertation fellowships. These are more likely to come your way if you have small grants already in place.

• If you have received small grants and dissertation funding, a postdoc will be easier to achieve.

• Catch 22: Funding agencies like to support someone whom they see as “fundable” – that is, someone who has gotten money before. This is what I call the snowball effect, and it means you have to start early.

Persistence• Why apply for grants, given the high rejection rate?

– It’s good practice

– It helps you define your project and figure out where you want to go with it. This knowledge will help you at every stage of your work – when you’re taking Ph.D. exams, when you’re applying for jobs, when you’re trying to get your book published.

– It prepares you to apply for future grants, since you can reuse some material on future applications.

– You could receive useful feedback on your project, esp. if you are applying to a govt. agency like NEH.

– Grant applications sometimes help you make useful contacts w/ others in your field (esp. NEH seminars).

– The one acceptance (or more) that you eventually get will make it all worth it. And it will help you get the next grant. And maybe a job. And so on.