Georgetown University Research Leave

The Georgetown University Research Leave (GURL) Program provides one semester of leave for tenure line faculty to conduct research or scholarship, or to work on a project in the creative arts.

Award Features

• GURLs provide one semester of leave, free of all teaching and service obligations, to tenure line faculty at any rank – Assistant, Associate, or Full Professor
• Awards are made in the Fall semester, to be taken in the Fall or Spring of the following academic year.

Eligibility

• All tenure line faculty of the Main Campus, with the exception of those in the McDonough School of Business, are eligible to apply.
• A GURL is a period of research leave, and as such is subject to the 3-in-4 rule: that is, a maximum of three semesters of research leave can be taken in any four-year period of counted service.

Selection Criteria

Subject to satisfying the eligibility criteria above, selection of proposals will be based on the following criteria:

• Quality: applicants should explain in broadly accessible language the contribution their proposed research or scholarship will make to the literature or repertoire, and any future work to which it will lead.
• Feasibility: applicants should present a clear and detailed plan for how the research/scholarship will be executed.
• Credentials: applicants should explain how their track record, or in the case of junior faculty, their promise of future achievements, supports the notion that the proposed work will be successful

Application

Applications consist of a project narrative of up to 1,000 words and a current CV. The narrative will address the issues of quality and feasibility outlined above, and include a description of the nature of the proposed research and its central hypothesis, the site, methodology, data, collaborations, and other inputs into the work, and the expected outcomes in terms of publications, other products, grant applications, performances, seminars, etc.

Your submission will be reviewed by faculty colleagues outside of your department, but in a related field.  Please take this into account when crafting the language of your proposal.

Applications should be submitted via GU-PASS.

Application will open in late August 2026.

Financial Process

A GURL recipient will receive full pay and benefits as normal.

The semester will count as a semester of service towards sabbatical credit.  Units that need course coverage as a result of the faculty member being on leave should work with their school-level Senior Business Manager and the Provost’s Finance and Business Office in the budget planning process.

Deliverable

Recipients should submit a 200-word description of the activities that were conducted while on leave by May 31 or January 31 immediately following the semester in which it is taken, with links, if available, to electronic copies of any materials – publications, working papers, reports, etc. – produced as a result.

The deliverable can be uploaded in GU-PASS. Instructions for uploading the deliverable may be found in this User Guide.

Faculty members who do not submit a deliverable as required will be ineligible for future internal grants.

Previous Awardees

2025

2024

2023

2022

2021