Faculty Venture Fund

Announcement: Initial applications for the Faculty Venture Fund are due on October 28, 2009.

Building upon the success of the Provost’s International Collaborative Research grants, and the recently launched Georgetown Africa Interest Network (GAIN), the Provost’s Faculty Committee for International Initiatives created a new venture fund to stimulate new international program development that cannot be achieved through existing means. This new grant is meant to provide seed money to support faculty seeking to develop enduring collaborations with organizations in Africa. The venture fund complements existing grant programs in that it shares the principle that strong programs start with individual collaborations.

Eligibility

The program leader must be from the Main Campus Ordinary Faculty. Collaboration with others at Georgetown is encouraged.

Grant Criteria

Proposals funded under this program will have the following characteristics:

  1. International and collaborative in nature. There must be an external collaborator who is a faculty member or researcher at an African organization.
  2. Foster enduring, institutional benefits. Examples of goals might include, but are not limited to:
    • development of new courses of study involving international collaboration, i.e. courses, concentrations, majors, and degrees taught bi-locally at Georgetown and an African partnering institution
    • institutionalized exchange of researchers or sharing of experimental data/equipment
    • establishment of joint conferences or symposia
    • founding of a joint center or endowed chair.
  3. Plan for second stage funding. Winning proposals will identify potential external and internal support for follow-on work (citing examples of similar funding, or statements of commitment to funding the described work), and have as a deliverable the preparation and submission of at least one proposal for additional support.

Funding Level

The level of funding will be based on the detailed budget submitted with the final application. The total budget may not exceed $10,000.

Application Process

Interested Main Campus faculty should submit an initial application in paper or electronic format to Philip Thomas by October 28, 2009. The application should contain the following elements:
  1. Description of the proposed project.
  2. Information on the foreign collaborator(s) and their suitability for the proposed work.
  3. Explanation of how the project will help your department, school or the University overall.
  4. Expected uses of funds: e.g. travel, supplies, graduate student stipend.
  5. Optional: If already known, include a description of institutions that might be interested in providing second stage funding.  Ideally this would be substantiated by reference to a call for proposals or an example of a similar project that has received funding in the past.
  6. Brief CVs of the principal investigator(s) and foreign collaborator.

Not including the CVs, the initial request shall not exceed two pages.

After reviewing the initial requests, the Faculty Committee for International Initiatives will invite several requestors to submit a final proposal, which will include: a greater elaboration of the project, a full budget, a list of specific institutions to which second-stage funding proposals will be submitted, and letters of support from the Georgetown home department and the foreign collaborator’s institution.

In developing a final proposal, applicants will have the opportunity to meet with the International Initiatives staff, who will provide feedback and introduce other University resources helpful to proposal development.

Please direct questions to Philip Thomas, International Initiatives, Office of the Provost.