Description
The purpose of the SSRI Seed Money Grants Program is to help faculty collect preliminary data or perform preliminary research to submit or revise and resubmit a competitive proposal to an external funding agency within 12 months of the end of their SSRI Seed Money Grant.
Application Deadlines (Due by 11:45 p.m. CST)
Fall: Sunday, October 29, 2023
Spring: Sunday, March 24, 2024
Award Information (FY24)
Estimated Number of Awards: 6
Anticipated Funding Amount per Award: $10,000
The expected start dates are as follows: Fall cycle on January 1st, and Spring cycle on July 1st.
Eligibility
The SSRI Seed Money Grants Program is available to full-time, tenured, and tenure-track faculty at all ranks. Faculty may only receive assistance from this program once per academic year. Faculty who receive an SSRI Seed Money Grant but do not submit an external grant proposal will be ineligible to apply for future seed money grants.
Funding
Requests may be up to $10,000 and must be justified within the application. The amount awarded may differ from the amount requested. The duration of the award is 18 months. There is an award competition each semester, with six awards available in each fiscal year (July 1- June 30). Applications will be evaluated by the School’s Faculty Advisory Committee (FAC), steered by the Dean of Social Sciences and a six-member faculty panel representing multiple departments. Proposals must be written with a multi-disciplinary audience in mind. All research must comply with university regulations (e.g., IRB approval). All funds remaining at the time of award expiration will be returned without notice. No-cost extensions will not be granted under any circumstance.
Allowable Expenses
Funds may support research-related travel (transportation, lodging, and other incidentals; subsistence/meal per diem will not be allowed), wages (including fringe benefits) for the staff or graduate/undergraduate student workers, supplies, subject compensation; special software needs if the need is tied to the project and other miscellaneous research expenses. Requests for travel funding should be actual dollar estimates of your anticipated expenses – per diem for lodging is not allowable. No support is provided for faculty supplemental compensation, travel to conferences, or computer hardware.
Application Procedure
Submit the completed online Seed Money application (at the bottom of this page) by the deadline. Required proposal components are listed below. Incomplete applications will not be considered for funding. All materials must be written with at least 11-point Arial or Times New Roman font, with one-inch margins and single spacing, and saved as a PDF file.
- Proposal narrative (maximum of 3 pages): The proposal narrative should discuss the research proposed and explain how it is expected to lead to a larger research project for which external funding will be sought. The research question of interest and the methods used should be clearly explained and accessible to a non-specialist academic audience. Explain how and why this research question is significant and innovative in the context of existing literature in the discipline. Relevant literature should be included in a separate References/Bibliography section and will not count toward the three-page narrative limit. Explain the anticipated end product of the research and how you expect it to lay the foundation for subsequent research. The proposal narrative must contain, as a separate section within the narrative, a project timeline. This section will outline your schedule for the proposed research and should indicate when you plan to begin the proposed research, where it will be conducted, and when it will end. Appendices are not allowed.
- Potential funding sources: Include a list of possible future funding sources appropriate for a proposal that expands this research. Include funding agency, links to the funding announcements or request for proposal, amount of award, and due dates.
- Itemized budget and justification (maximum of two pages): Include the item, cost, quantity, and justification for each item. Examples of allowable grant expenses include but are not limited to research-related travel (transportation, lodging, and other incidentals; subsistence will not be allowed), wages (including fringe benefits) for graduate or undergraduate student workers or staff, human subject payments, supplies, special software needs if the need is tied to the project and other miscellaneous research expenses. Requests for travel funding should be actual dollar estimates of your anticipated expenses – per diem for lodging is not allowable. No support is provided for subsistence, faculty supplemental compensation, travel to conferences, or computer hardware.
- Curriculum Vitae (maximum of two pages): Any format is allowed, including biosketches used by NSF and NIH (but limited to 2 pages).
- List of current and pending support (no page limit): Any format is allowed, including current and pending support used by NSF and NIH.
- Prior reviews, if applicable: If the SSRI Seed Money Grant is being used to resubmit an external proposal that was previously declined, the application should include a summary of the significant criticisms raised in the review and an explanation of how the SSRI Seed Money Grant will be used to address these criticisms.
Evaluation Criteria
The primary criteria are the significance of the proposed research, its feasibility within the planned timeframe, and its potential to lead to competitive funding applications for subsequent research. The FAC panel will more readily appreciate these aspects of the proposal if written clearly and for a non-specialist academic audience.
Applications will be evaluated in significance, innovation, rationale and justification, feasibility, and likelihood of resulting in external funding. Proposals will be more effective if written clearly and for a non-specialist academic audience.
Requirements and Expectations
Those who receive an SSRI Seed Money Grant are required to provide additional information:
- A report (maximum of 2 pages) summarizing outcomes must be submitted within 60 days of the expiration of the award.
- A notification of submitting a proposal to an external funding agency, which should be within 12 months of the end of the award. If the sponsor to which you are applying does not have a deadline that falls within that month's window, please contact Chris Rodriguez (carod@rice.edu) to discuss your intended submission.
If you cannot scroll through the complete application form, click on a field within the application and use your tab key to navigate to the attachments section of the form.