Travel Grants

The Center provides opportunities for financial support to faculty who are engaged in individual research that requires visits to libraries, museums, collections, sites, or archives.

Grants for international travel are currently capped at three thousand six hundred ($3600) dollars; awards for domestic travel are capped at two thousand ($2000) dollars.

Deadlines

The Board will meet on the first Friday of each month in the Fall and Spring semesters. Please submit funding requests one week in advance of any given meeting, to ensure consideration. In general, requests for retroactive funding will not be considered, but faculty may inquire with the Director if extenuating circumstances arise.   

Faculty who apply for grants to cover expenses already made assume the risk that the expenses will not be approved or reimbursed. In the case of retroactive requests for funding, these must be submitted by the next Board meeting immediately following the purchase. Requests for funding submitted at any later meeting after the purchase date will not be considered.   

Criteria

The following criteria will guide the Board in its deliberations:

• Proposed travel must serve the applicant’s current research activities and should contribute to the eventual publication of a piece of scholarship or a creative project.
• Proposed travel must give the applicant access to relevant resources and experiences available only by means of travel.
• Proposed travel must be made with a specific goal in mind—for instance, to consult a particular collection or engage in a particular activity. General or exploratory aims will be less likely to garner support than proposals outlining precise outcomes reasonably to be expected.

Additional Information

In addition to addressing the criteria above, proposals should include an overview of the research project to be served by the proposed travel, and must include the applicant’s current curriculum vitae. A detailed itinerary and projected budget is required.

Because travel grants are a relatively costly way of advancing research, the Board of the Center awards only a few each year, depending on the funds available each year, the programmatic priorities established each year, and the number and size of requests received.

Managing Expeditures

The Center for the Humanities requires funding recipients and Center-supported program/event organizers to observe Drake University accounting guidelines. The University's tax-free status depends upon uniform observance of these guidelines. Expenses incurred in contravention of these guidelines will not be reimbursed. For more information, please read our grant management page.

Reporting

Recipients of funding from the Center for the Humanities are asked to provide reports on the impact and effect of the activities funded.

Acknowledging the Center

The Center’s support must be acknowledged in the published work and, when possible, in announcements, presentations, and publicity materials connected to it. Please see the acknowledgments page for examples of appropriate formulations of acknowledgment.

Apply

To apply, please email your application and CV as attachments to humanities.center@drake.edu. The first two items in all applications should be (1) the amount requested and (2) the budget breakdown for the amount requested. We will also eagerly read about your project's details, timeline, and its importance to the Humanities at Drake and beyond, but we can only approve requests that include a total amount requested and a budget breakdown.