XIV. Funding for Professional Activities

A. TRAVEL AND RESEARCH

All continuing and visiting faculty members at Hamilton are eligible for receiving College conference travel funds, and they are required to fill out the Faculty Travel Funding Authorization Form. Guidelines for filling out the form and claiming travel expenses are listed in The Red Book. Chairs should familiarize themselves with the forms and guidelines, and encourage their faculty to request funding well in advance of any professional travel.

Funds can also be requested for anticipated research expenses. Faculty can request money for research travel, equipment, and publishing expenses, to name a few.  New faculty have start-up funds that cover research expenses for the first 4 years of their time at Hamilton.

B. FUNDS FOR FACULTY GRANT PROPOSALS

The Dean of Faculty office has a Director of Sponsored Program Grants, Jeff Ritchie, as well as an annual grant activity budget for support of individual faculty (as opposed to institutional) grant proposals to external grant agencies. The goal of the Director and the Fund is to encourage proposal development, strengthen submissions, demonstrate institutional support for proposed activities, and increase funding rates. The fund offers several broad categories of support:

1. Proposal development support

   1. Proposal-writing workshop attendance

   2. Consultations and collaborations on proposal development.

   3. Preliminary data collection and analysis (may include stipends).

2. Supplemental salary

   1. Supplemental salary and benefits (“top-up”) on external awards of partial support for personal leaves for professional activity or one-year periodic leaves (e.g., NEH, NEA fellowships).

3. Cost-sharing

   1. Up to 30% (unless agency-specified otherwise) in cost-sharing on specific non-salary expenses/ requests (e.g., equipment, supplies, travel).

4. Indirect costs redirection

   1. For grants that reimburse the college for indirect costs (e.g., NSF and NIH grants with salary and wages), the equivalent of 10% of those costs may be requested for project/ grant development-related (non-salary) expenses.

5. Internal project awards

   1. For individuals who have demonstrated “strenuous effort” in seeking grant support but not secured funding, despite strong proposal submissions, substantial support may be provided towards moving the proposed project forward.

Application for any of the above should be made well in advance of proposal deadlines to your Associate Dean of Faculty, from whom more details are available. Overall support for a particular project will be limited, and so a plan for proposal development, pre-award commitments, and post-award support should be considered together.