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University Academic Affairs

Research Council Program Grants Announcement (Applications due on December 1, 2023)

October 16, 2023 

Dear Colleagues,

The Office of the Executive Vice President for Academic Affairs (EVPAA) is pleased to announce the next round of annual grant opportunities from the Rutgers University Research Council (RC) program, which has provided internal grants to the Rutgers faculty for the past 80 consecutive years.

The RC awards program offers seed funding in support of faculty scholarship that tackles challenging disciplinary problems in the sciences, social sciences, humanities, and creative arts. The council is constituted by faculty representing the many fields of active research found across all four Chancellor-led units of our university. Council members review and allocate research funding directly to their faculty peers. We are grateful to Professors Antoinette Y. Farmer and Kathleen J. Pottick, who have agreed to serve as co-chairs of the Research Council.

This year, we have revised the Research Council Awards process that will make funding available through six separate funding mechanisms:

The Individual Fulcrum Award Program is tailored to individual researchers and those in the creative arts who are testing out new ideas to accelerate their scientific inquiry, program of research and scholarship, or creative production. The program especially welcomes applications from associate professors.

The Social and Racial Justice Award Program, inspired by President Holloway’s Equity Report and the Rutgers commitment to fostering excellence in and as a beloved community, supports academic research on racial and social justice in all domains of intellectual, social, artistic, and environmental life. 

The Climate Action Award Program, created in recognition of the Rutgers commitment to achieving carbon neutrality by 2040 and becoming carbon-negative no later than its 275th anniversary in 2041, supports faculty whose work addresses the global climate crisis and its solutions at a variety of scales.

The Collaborative Multidisciplinary Award Program offers the opportunity for a group of faculty members across disciplines to work together on a new, shared problem or line of research. Since complex intellectual and social problems often require multiple perspectives and viewpoints to solve them, the program is designed to foster and reward creative and collaborative interdisciplinary work. 

The Subvention Program for the Publication of Scholarly Books provides partial subsidies to university and other highly regarded scholarly presses to cover a portion of the cost of publishing a scholarly book to make it more affordable.

The Manuscript Review Award helps Assistant and Associate rank faculty members publish authoritative, thought-provoking, field-changing books. Awardees will receive a formal manuscript review plus a three-hour workshop/seminar led by an external senior scholar.

Applications are due on December 1, 2023, at 5:00 p.m. EST. Please visit the Research Council Awards Program website to access the request for proposals, frequently asked questions, and previously funded awards.

The co-chairs will host an Information Session on Monday, October 23, 2023, at 12:00 p.m. EST. Interested faculty can register here.

For questions about the program, please contact rcg@oq.rutgers.edu.

Sincerely,

Prabhas V. Moghe, Ph.D.
Executive Vice President for Academic Affairs
Distinguished Professor