Skip to main content

The University offers opportunities to faculty in support of their research:

George Grauel Faculty Fellowship

The Grauel Fellowships are available on a competitive basis to support tenured or tenure-track faculty in their research for either one full semester at full salary or one full year at half-salary.

  • Category A Fellowships are primarily research-oriented and should result in a paper, a publication such as a book, monograph, short story, or refereed journal article.
  • Category B Fellowships are devoted to other types of faculty development, such as writing textbooks, curriculum development, coursework devoted to getting up to the current level of research in one’s field, retooling in another field of research, academic service-oriented activities, or other professional activities.

Recent awardees can be accessed here.

Fellowships are awarded by the Committee on Research, Service, and Faculty Development.

Applying for the Fellowship

The deadline for submitting an application for a Grauel Faculty Fellowship for 2023-24 will Monday, October 23, 2023, at the end of the day.  

Listed below is detailed information about the Fellowship and the process of applying for the award.  Click on the links to go directly to a section.


PURPOSE AND ELIGIBILITY:
This award is a leave of either one or two semesters, with compensation, for the purpose of professional development. To be eligible to apply for a Faculty Fellowship, there are three prerequisites. The Faculty member must:

  1. be on active status,
  2. have completed at least three successive years of full-time teaching at this University by the application deadline [see the interpretation in Appendix I.2 of the Faculty Handbook that a faculty member must have been under a faculty contract [[Appendix D]] for three successive years by the application deadline], and
  3. have completed at least three years of full-time teaching at this University since the last Faculty Fellowship. [Meaning three full years–six successive semesters of full-time teaching since the last faculty fellowship–as clarified by the Faculty Handbook Committee 10/97.]

In addition to the application, at least TWO letters must be submitted.  The first letter should be from the appropriate department chair and should address the impact that the leave will have on the department and the University.  The second letter should be from a person, presumably in the applicant's discipline or in a closely related field, who does not have a conflict of interest related to the project and who can comment knowledgeably about it.  Collaborator and co-author letters of support may be submitted as supplemental letters but do not meet the evaluative requirement of this second letter that should deal with the merits and feasibility of the project as well as the ability of the applicant to complete it successfully.  (Please see the part of the application that deals with “Letters of Support.”)

Applications will be judged on the significance of the work to be done with respect to the candidate's research agenda, the potential contributions of this research to the field, and the feasibility of the project to be completed during the time frame proposed.  Criteria used to evaluate the proposal will include the candidate's past research productivity, the depth and breadth of the bibliography, the project methodology, the ability of the proposal to be understood by a general audience, and the quality of the letter(s) of support.  In the interest of promoting fairness and efficiency in the review of applications, incomplete applications and applications without letters will NOT be considered.


CATEGORIES AND PROCESS:
The Committee on Research, Service, and Faculty Development will accept proposals for two different types of projects, with separate funding for the two categories provided by the Vice President of Academic Affairs Office. The Interim Associate Academic Vice President for Academic Affairs serves as the ex officio Chair of the Committee. In making its decision, the Committee may take into account how often and how recently an applicant has been funded by University fellowships. All things being equal, the Committee may give preference to faculty who have not yet received any award or to those who have not recently received an award. Faculty (especially those applying for the first time) are strongly encouraged to discuss their application with a Committee member prior to submission. The two categories of proposals are:

  • Projects that are primarily research-oriented (Category A Fellowships). For purposes of evaluating Grauel Faculty Fellowship applications, research refers to the scholarship of discovery and/or application, creative works, and artistic endeavors. The work should result in significant scholarly contribution appropriate to the discipline, such as a refereed conference paper or poster; a publication such as a book, monograph, short story, or refereed journal article; or an artistic performance.
  • Projects which are primarily devoted to other types of scholarly development (Category B Fellowships). These may involve writing of textbooks, curriculum development, coursework devoted to getting up to the current level of research in one’s field, retooling in another field of research, academic service-oriented activities, or other professional activities.


PROPOSAL:
The proposal should address each of the topics listed below, limited to no more than 1,500 words for the entire proposal, and be free of egregious grammatical and orthographic errors.  Because the committee consists of faculty members in diverse academic fields, proposals should be accessible to an educated lay audience outside the applicant's disciplinary field.  Please avoid technical language and jargon where possible.

  1. The nature and scope of your project. (What do you intend to do?)
  2. The significance of the project. (How does it contribute to your field? Why is it important?)
  3. How the project relates to a body of work in the field. (What has previously been done in the area?)
  4. Your procedures and techniques. (How will the work be done?  If you have not indicated it elsewhere in your application, please indicate here if this work involves (a) collaborator(s) and how the tasks will be divided.  Please do not assume that those outside your discipline know the sort of methodology and/or day-to-day tasks of the project.)
  5. Resources at your disposal (such as additional funding possibilities).
  6. Your professional capabilities to carry out the project. (What skills do you bring to the project? How is it related to your past professional work and your future career development?)

 

OTHER QUESTIONS (separate from Project Proposal):

  1. Provide the tentative time frame within which you will work (the evolution of the project).
  2. Describe the expected outcomes of your project.  Please be as specific as possible.  If you plan to publish your findings, indicate in what venue(s), and provide a rationale for the placement, as well as when you plan to submit a manuscript for review.


BIBLIOGRAPHY:

A bibliography of relevant sources is an essential component of the application.  Though it may be tentative, the bibliography provides evidence of the candidate's breadth, depth, and currency of knowledge.  Applications, including creative projects, should therefore demonstrate an understanding of the significant literature in the field, relevant methodologies, and/or the body of work on which the proposed project draws.  Bibliographies developed for other purposes or taken directly from a dissertation or publication are a disservice to the proposal.


CURRICULUM VITAE:
A curriculum vitae no longer than 4 pages is required, which includes:

  1. Bibliography of your past academic work (Complete citations will include page numbers of articles and book chapters.)
  2. A list of relevant unpublished research (talks, papers before meetings, and the like)
  3. A list of grants and awards you have received.

Proposals that do not meet these guidelines will not be reviewed.


HUMAN OR ANIMAL SUBJECTS REVIEW
A project involving human or animal subjects must obtain approval from the Institutional Review Board(IRB) or the Institutional Animal Care and Use Committee (IACUC) before the project can be undertaken.


OUTSIDE SUPPORT SOURCES
Specific information can be included about any sources of outside support, anticipated, pending, or received.


PUBLISHER’S CONTRACT
If this application is for the writing of a textbook, a copy of the signed publisher’s contract will be requested.


LETTERS OF SUPPORT

Letters of support will be requested from the following:

  1. An evaluative letter of support from someone knowledgeable in your field but not involved in your project which addresses the importance of the project must be submitted; the Committee strongly encourages that such a letter come from someone outside the university.
  2. For projects that involve other people or institutions (for example, a co-investigator, a laboratory at another institution or an archive where permission is required), a letter of cooperation should be included. In the case of a project involving a collaborator, the letter should clearly delineate the tasks and responsibilities for which the John Carroll applicant will take the lead.  Please note that this letter does NOT replace the required evaluative letter of support.
  3. A letter from the department chair must indicate how your courses will be covered and may include support for your project.
  4. If a department chair is applying, a letter must be included from the appropriate dean indicating coverage of the department during the leave period.

Letters not attached to the application form must be sent directly to the Interim Associate Vice President for Academic Affairs.

All required letters must be submitted by the deadline or the proposal will not be reviewed.


CONDITIONS OF ACCEPTANCE

1. Upon acceptance of the Fellowship, recipients must agree to return to full-time service as a faculty member at John Carroll University for the academic year following the award, relinquish the award, or reimburse the University. Those who have been notified that a tenure-track position has not been renewed are not eligible for the award.

2. Recipients are required to submit a written report on the results of the Fellowship to the Interim Associate Vice President for Academic Affairs no later than October 1 following the award period. The report may take the form of the finished product of the research leave, for example, a manuscript submitted for publication; if not that, it should be a substantive account–at least several pages in length–of the work carried out during the leave period. Failure to submit a report by the stated deadline will render the recipient ineligible for subsequent research and teaching awards, including Summer Research Fellowships, Grauel Faculty Fellowships, course development grants, and miscellaneous research assistance, until such time as a report is submitted.

3. Recipients are expected to present their research to the campus community. This could occur at one of the Scholarly Lunches held during the academic year following their leave period. Typically the presentation lasts up to half an hour, makes use of PowerPoint slides, and includes time for questions from the audience.

4. Recipients are expected to do what is proposed in the application. Should any change occur in goals and plans, you must notify the Committee on Research and Service through the Interim Associate Vice President for Academic Affairs and receive approval from the Committee before proceeding.


To apply for the Grauel Fellowship, please visit the Forms and Deadlines page.

Please note:  The number of Summer Research Fellowships awarded for Summer 2024 will be limited.  In the selection process, preference will be given to faculty who have not previously received an SRF.

The application deadline for SRFs for Summer 2024 will be Monday, October 9, 2023, at the end of the day.  

**********

Summer Research Fellowships are available in two categories on a competitive basis to provide support for faculty research during the summer. Fellowships are awarded by the Committee on Research & Service.

  • Category A fellowships ($5,000) provide a stipend for a summer research project on a full-time basis with the expectation of a submission to a high-quality, refereed journal or an equivalent standard of intellectual contribution.
  • Category B fellowships ($3,500) allow faculty to teach no more than one course in one summer session only.

This fellowship is available to Arts and Sciences tenured or tenure-track faculty.

 


Information on the Fellowship

There are two categories of Summer Research Fellowships for which all tenured or tenure-track faculty are eligible to apply. The first category (A) provides a $5,000 stipend for a summer research project. Research is defined as scholarship appropriate to one’s discipline. It includes creative projects in the arts for those disciplines in which such work would be comparable to scholarly research. Fellowship recipients must devote full time to their project, and they must agree not to teach during any summer session. The second category (B) provides a $3,500 stipend and allows the faculty member to teach only one course during the summer sessions. Projects in this category presume the quality of the first, but may require less time to complete.

Summer Research Fellowships support proposals for research projects which can be substantially completed during the summer and which will lead to an identifiable outcome, such as a chapter in a book, an article in an academic publication, poems, a play, a short story, or a conference paper. The project may be part of a larger program of research, but should have a scope and expected result suited to the summer period. It is expected that the faculty member’s research efforts will result in a submission to a high quality refereed journal or demonstrate an equivalent standard of intellectual contribution. The Summer Research Fellowship does not normally support initial research for open-ended projects, research exclusively for course preparation, service projects, or dissertations unless there are exceptional circumstances. Faculty are encouraged to discuss their application with a Committee member prior to submission.

In making its decision, the Committee on Research, Service, and Faculty Development may take into account how often and how recently an applicant has been funded by University fellowships. All things being equal, the Committee will give preference to faculty who have not yet received any award or to those who have not recently received an award. In addition, the Committee reserves the right to determine whether an applicant in Category A may be supported instead at the level of Category B funding.

Upon acceptance of the fellowship, recipients must agree to return to the John Carroll University faculty for the academic year following the award, relinquish the award, or reimburse the University. Recipients should inform the University of any other compensation received for the proposed research from other sources. The University would then expect to be appropriately reimbursed.

Recipients are expected to do what is proposed in the application. Should any change occur in goals and plans, the recipient must notify the Committee on Research and Service through the Interim Associate Vice President for Academic Affairs and receive approval from the Committee before proceeding.

Projects involving human or animal subjects must obtain approval from the Institutional Review Board or the Institutional Animal Care and Use Committee before the use of these subjects in research.

Recipients are required to submit a written report on the results of their research. The report may take the form of the finished product created during the summer, for example, a manuscript submitted for publication; if not that, it should be a substantive account–at least several pages in length–of the work carried out during the summer. The report should be submitted to the Interim Associate Vice President for Academic Affairs by February 1 of the following year.

One half of the award will be paid on June 30 of the project Summer. The other half will be paid after an acceptable report is submitted. There will be no final payment if an acceptable report is not submitted by February 1 of the following year. In addition, failure to submit an acceptable report will also jeopardize the recipient’s subsequent chances of receiving research support.

Application Information

The online application must be completed in one sitting; work on it cannot be saved and continued on subsequent visits.  The following information will be requested.

  1. Contact Information
  2.  Fellowship Category (A or B)
  3. Where will the work on the project be done?
  4. Indicate other pending or approved grant support for this project.
  5. List all previous summer research awards and their results.
  6. Provide a statement of not more than a few sentences, in layperson’s language, describing your proposed project.
  7. Describe your project more fully by addressing ALL of the following topics in the order listed below. There is a 750-word limit for all of these topics combined.
    1) The nature and scope of the project. (What do you intend to do?) 
    2) The significance of the project. (Why is it important?)  
    3) How the project relates to a body of work in the field as well as to your own research. 
    4) Your methodology. (Explain your procedures and techniques in language accessible to those outside your discipline.)  
    5) The tentative time frame for the project.  
    6) Expected outcomes and dissemination of the results.  
  8. Does your project require IRB or IACUC approval?
  9. Provide a bibliography of all your most recent publications (within five years), including in the area of your proposed research project. The bibliography should follow the generally accepted requirements of the discipline.
  10. Provide a tentative bibliography of relevant sources associated with the proposal which demonstrates knowledge of the field. Applications, including creative projects, should demonstrate an understanding of the literature in the field, relevant methodologies, and/or the body of work on which the proposed project draws.
  11. Please attach one letter from a person of your choice who can comment knowledgeably on your proposal, and please explain your choice.  If you wish, you may ask the person to send the letter directly to the Interim Associate Vice President for Academic Affairs.

To apply for the Summer Research Fellowship, please visit the Forms and Deadlines page.

The Committee on Research, Service, and Faculty Development promotes, fosters, and encourages research and publication by directly assisting faculty research and development as much as possible within the limits of available funds. Small grants for financial assistance for the support of research and publication by full-time faculty members, are available from the Interim Associate Vice President for Academic Affairs who serves ex officio as chair of the Committee on Research and Service.  Requests will be limited to $300, and an applicant will be limited to one award per academic year.

Click here for the application form.

Applying for Research Funds

Assistance for research and writing may take the following forms:

  • Purchase of some supplies.
  • Student assistance.
  • Support of publication, including page costs. (See Subvention Policy for additional information.)

The following are examples of financial assistance not ordinarily given:

  • Purchase of supplies normally provided under department budgetary funds.
  • Equipment that accrues permanently to the individual (e.g., the purchase of a camera might not be approved but film purchases might be).
  • Supplements to salaries.
  • Travel usually provided by the department. (Exceptions may be made by the Committee in special cases).
  • Repeated subsidy of publication.
  • Conference registration.
  • Copying, interlibrary loan, computer time (usually provided by the department budget).

When the project is completed, a brief report on the use of the funds must be submitted to the Interim Associate Vice President for Academic Affairs along with a list of expenditures and, when possible, receipts. If project is already complete, it is not necessary to submit another report.


To apply for the Financial Assistance for Research, please visit the Forms and Deadlines page.

Student research awards of up to $250 each are available to support undergraduate and graduate student research in any field.  The funds can be used to carry out research or to present research at a professional conference.  (Separate application forms are available for these purposes.)  Student applicants must be enrolled currently in degree programs and must be working with a faculty member on their research project.

Applications are considered on a rolling basis and are subject to availability of funds.  Students must submit a written report on their conference presentation or on the results of their research, a list of expenditures, and original receipts to the Associate Academic Vice President.

For further information, please contact Dr. Rebecca Drenovsky, rdrenovsky@jcu.edu, Interim Associate Vice President for Academic Affairs.

Visit the Forms and Deadlines page for the application.

See additional forms for faculty assistance at the Center for Teaching & Learning site.