We are pleased to announce the launch of the William T. Grant Scholars Program limited submission funding opportunity call for letters of intent.
Brief Overview: William T. Grant Scholars Program supports career development for promising early-career researchers. The program funds five-year research and mentoring plans that significantly expand researchers’ expertise in new disciplines, methods, and content areas. Each year, four to six Scholars are selected and each receives exactly $350,000, distributed over five years.
Internal Submission Deadline: Monday March 27, 2023
External Submission Deadline: July 5, 2023
Applicants should have a track record of conducting high-quality research and an interest in pursuing a significant shift in their trajectories as researchers. We recognize that early-career researchers are rarely given incentives or support to take measured risks in their work, so this award includes a mentoring component, as well as a supportive academic community.
Awards are based on applicants’ potential to become influential researchers, as well as their plans to expand their expertise in new and significant ways. The application should make a cohesive argument for how the applicant will expand his or her expertise. The research plan should evolve in conjunction with the development of new expertise, and the mentoring plan should describe how the proposed mentors will support applicants in acquiring that expertise. Proposed research plans must address questions that are relevant to policy and practice in the Foundation’s focus areas.
The Foundation’s mission is to support research to improve the lives of young people ages 5-25 in the United States. We pursue this mission by supporting research within two focus areas. Researchers interested in applying for a William T. Grant Scholars Award must select one focus area (see below).
Reducing Inequality
In this focus area, we support studies that aim to build, test, or increase understanding of programs, policies, or practices to reduce inequality in the academic, social, behavioral, or economic outcomes of young people, especially on the basis of race, ethnicity, economic standing, language minority status, or immigrant origins.
Studies on reducing inequality should aim to build, test, or increase understanding of programs, policies, or practices to reduce inequality in youth outcomes. We welcome descriptive studies that clarify mechanisms for reducing inequality or elucidate how or why a specific program, policy, or practice operates to reduce inequality. We also welcome intervention studies that examine attempts to reduce inequality. In addition, we seek studies that improve the measurement of inequality in ways that can enhance the work of researchers, practitioners, or policymakers. The common thread across all of this work, however, is a distinct and explicit focus on reducing inequality—one that goes beyond describing the causes or consequences of unequal outcomes and, instead, identifies leverage points for reducing inequality.
Improving the Use of Research Evidence
In this focus area, we support research to identify, build, and test strategies to ensure that research evidence is used in ways that benefit youth. We are particularly interested in research on improving the use of research evidence by state and local decision makers, mid-level managers, and intermediaries.
Studies on improving the use of research evidence should identify, build, and test strategies to ensure that research evidence is used in ways that benefit youth. We welcome ideas from social scientists across a range of disciplines, fields, and methodologies that can advance their own disciplines and fields and reveal insights about ways to improve the production and use of research evidence. Measures also are needed to capture changes in the nature and degree of research use. We welcome investigations about research use in various systems, including justice, child welfare, mental health, and education. Research teams have drawn on existing conceptual and empirical work from political science, communication science, knowledge mobilization, implementation science, organizational psychology and other areas related to the use of research for improvement, impact, and change in research, policy, and practice institutions. Critical perspectives that inform studies’ research questions, methods, and interpretation of findings are also welcome. Broadening the theoretical perspectives used to study ways to improving the usefulness, use, and impact of research evidence may create a new frontier of important research.
Additional information from the Sponsor: https://wtgrantfoundation.org/grants/william-t-grant-scholars-program
Required Internal Letter of Intent: Please submit a letter of intent with the application: (1) title, (2) short description of the research plan including a short summary of the applicant’s potential, strengths, and areas of growth, and (3) names of identified mentor(s).
Internal Pre-proposal: Faculty submitting LOIs will be contacted regarding an internal competition, if necessary. Should a competition be needed, each applicant will be notified.
Please sent LOIs to Mary Peace McRae in the School of Medicine Office for Research.
Comments