Deadline: July 6, 2017
The 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 junior researchers’ expertise in new disciplines, methods, and content areas. They recognize that early-career researchers are rarely given incentives or support to take such risks, so this award includes a mentoring component, as well as an emphasis on community and collaboration. Scholars Program applicants should have a track record of conducting high-quality research and an interest in pursuing a significant shift in their trajectories as researchers. Proposed research plans must address questions of policy and practice that are relevant to the Foundation’s focus areas.
Focus Areas
They fund research that increases understanding in one of our two focus areas:
- Programs, policies, and practices that reduce inequality in youth outcomes, and
- Strategies to improve the use of research evidence in ways that benefit youth.
They seek research that builds stronger theory and empirical evidence in these two areas. They intend for the research they support to inform change. While they do not expect that any one study will create that change, the research should contribute to a body of useful knowledge to improve the lives of young people.
Awards
- Award recipients are designated as William T. Grant Scholars. Each year, four to six Scholars are selected and each receives up to $350,000, distributed over five years;
- Awards begin July 1 and are made to the applicant’s institution. The award must not replace the institution’s current support of the applicant’s research.
Eligibility
Grants are made to organizations, not individuals. Grants are limited, without exception, to tax-exempt organizations. A copy of the Internal Revenue Service tax-exempt status determination letter is required from each applying organization.
- Applicants must be nominated by their institutions. Major divisions (e.g., College of Arts and Sciences, Medical School) of an institution may nominate only one applicant each year;
- Applicants must have received their terminal degree within seven years of submitting their application. The calculation of this is done by adding seven years to the date the doctoral degree was conferred. In medicine, the seven-year maximum is dated from the completion of the first residency;
- Applicants must be employed in career-ladder positions. For many applicants, this means holding a tenure-track position in a university. Applicants in other types of organizations should be in positions in which there is a pathway to advancement in a research career at the organization and the organization is fiscally responsible for the applicant’s position. The award may not be used as a post-doctoral fellowship;
- Applicants outside the United States are eligible. As with U.S. applicants, they must pursue research that has compelling policy or practice implications for youth in the United States.
- Applicants of any discipline are eligible.
Application Process
The William T. Grant Foundation accepts applications only through the online application system. They encourage applicants to begin the application as early as possible to review the online application and allow sufficient time to resolve any technical issues that may arise.
For more information, visit William T. Grant Scholars Program.
