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Funding Opportunities
Provost Fund for Student Collaboration (PFSC)
Purpose
Fostering exchange across the University's several faculties is one of the Provost's Office's priorities. Since 1998, the Provost's Office has provided small grants to groups of faculty members from different schools within the University to explore topics of common interest from multiple disciplinary perspectives.
Increasingly, students have sought similar opportunities. Just as faculty members have reached across school boundaries, so too have students recognized the value in communicating and collaborating with their fellow students in other schools and disciplines. There has, however, been no mechanism to enable groups of students to work together or to undertake specific collaborative projects.
The Provost's Office, therefore, has created a fund to support extracurricular academic collaborations among groups of students enrolled in different schools of the University. The Provost's Fund for Student Collaboration (PFSC) supports specific activities that bring together students from various faculties to explore a particular subject. Grants of up to $3000 will be awarded. The distinguishing characteristic of this fund is its devotion to academic enterprises. The fund is intended to enable students interested in a particular area of intellectual inquiry to explore that area with students enrolled in other schools. These one-year grants support specific activities, and do not provide continuing support.
Form of Activities/Eligibility
The Fund will typically support a network or consortium of student organizations engaged in collaborative academic activities, such as a conference, a speaker series, or other similar activities. To be eligible, the working group must consist of representatives of recognized student organizations from at least three different schools and include at least 10 students.
Each group must have a faculty "home" that will (a) oversee the financial aspects of the grant, and (b) provide whatever administrative oversight or guidance is necessary. A note from a senior administrator at the home school (typically the Dean of Students) agreeing to host the working group must accompany the application.
In unusual cases, a group of individual students from different schools but not affiliated with official student organizations may want to work together on a specific academic project, such as a conference. In such a case, the Provost's Fund will consider making a one-time grant to assist in the particular project. Applications for such grants must be submitted by the Dean of Students or comparable senior administrator of the school agreeing to be the "home" Faculty. In addition, each such group must have a Faculty Adviser, who may hold an appointment at the "home" school or at another school.
The fund is not intended to provide support for new, continuing student organizations. For this reason, a student consortium may refer to itself as "the Student Consortium on X at Harvard", but may not use the Harvard name or insignia in any other way, especially in ways that suggest that it is a permanent student organization.
Funding
Grants of up to $3000 are available for each group selected. Funding is available to cover expenses such as (a) meeting costs for the group (meals, refreshments, etc.), (b) travel costs for outside speakers or experts visiting the group or (c) costs related to a conference.
Funding will not typically cover salaries (of students or faculty), routine technology costs, or other expenses that are covered through other sources.
Application Process
The group leader (or in the case of individual students, the Dean of Students) should submit a brief application (around 2 pages) describing the group's topic, and the specific activities planned, and a general budget, and identifying the other student groups (or students) involved. A note from the home school endorsing the project and agreeing to the oversight mentioned above must accompany the application.
The final approval of funds will be contingent upon compliance with the rules governing the University "Use of Name" policy. All content generated by the applicants' organization must adhere to the guidelines described in detail at policies_guidelines/names_insignias.html. Similar restrictions are attached to use of name in electronic contexts: policies_guidelines/useofname/electronic_contexts.html. Student associations are reminded that all related content must provide adequate disclosure of the group's student status.
Grants must be used in the year in which they are awarded. Two reports, one at the end of the first semester and one at the end of the year, will be expected from each group, detailing in what activities the group has engaged, who has participated, the substance of the issues explored, and any resulting products.
Applications will be accepted on a rolling basis throughout the academic year. Please deliver all proposals either via email to mpage@camail.harvard.edu or in hard copy to:
Provost's Fund for Student Collaboration
Office of the Provost
Holyoke Center 880
1350 Massachusetts Avenue
Cambridge, MA 02138
If you have any questions, you can contact Marshall Page via phone at (617) 495-2579 or via email at mpage@camail.harvard.edu.
