Funding Opportunities

The Faculty Summer Teaching Grants Program provides faculty summer salary to engage in projects with the potential to significantly enhance instruction at the graduate or undergraduate level. A subcommittee of the Research and Creative Activities Council reviews proposals and makes funding recommendations to the Vice Provost for Research. For additional details please refer to the Request for Proposals.

The following are examples of some recent successful proposals:

• Using the Program R for Graduate Statistics Training in Psychology
• Questioning Color: ART 372 New Experimental Color Photography
• A new geochemistry course with applications in Earth, Marine, and Material Science

The Faculty Summer Research and Creative Activities Grants Program provides faculty summer salary to engage in projects with potential to result significantly advance their professional development and field of research, scholarly or creative work. Applications are reviewed by the Faculty Summer Research and Creative Activities Grants Committee, which makes funding recommendations to the Vice Provost for Research. For additional details please refer to the Request for Proposals.

The following are examples of some recent successful proposals:

• Quantifying sound localization cues for hearing aids in “cocktail party” situations
• An Assessment of Accumulated Microplastics in Whatcom County Mussels
• The Systemic Racism Curriculum Project

This program provides funding to engage in projects that advance the recipient’s professional development and field of research, scholarly or creative work. Funds may be used for supplies, equipment, research-related travel, performances, exhibitions, displays and similar creative activities, as well as other necessary expenses. For additional details please refer to the Request for Proposals.

This program funding to assist with manuscript preparation and publication. Allowable costs include indexing, licensing fees for copyrighted materials, page charges, figure preparation, and open-access fees. Professional editing costs for books (but not journal papers) is also supported. For additional details please refer to the Request for Proposals.

This goal of this program is to help seed projects with potential to open new long-term directions for research, creative expression or scholarship at Western Washington University (WWU). Pilot Project Grants (PPG’s) are intended to enrich and expand WWU’s portfolio of scholarly and creative programs by stimulating the pursuit of opportunities representing new lines of inquiry for the principal investigator (PI), that are of high value to the discipline, and that are expected to have long-lasting impact. The program is designed to allow applicants from all disciplines the opportunity to compete successfully, even if their discipline is not traditionally connected to sponsored research. Thus, PPG’s need not necessarily aim at producing extramural funding, though they may do so. For details, please see the Request for Proposals. 

The New Initiatives Fund (NIF) provides funding to support efforts at securing external funding for new cross-cutting initiatives.  The program provides teaching release, salary, and other support to help individuals and small teams pursue major opportunities where the effort is concentrated but the benefits would be widespread. For details see the Request for Proposals.

The Fraser Endowment for Equipment for the Sciences is one of six endowments generously established by a gift from the estate of Gordon H. and Alice C. Fraser. As the endowment agreement describes, “The sciences have a constant need for specialized equipment or literature to maintain their training and support programs beyond that which would be provided from the State. The Trustors desire that endowment distributions be used for this purpose.” The following describes how endowment revenue will be allocated for equipment. For details see the Request for Proposals.

Western Innovation Training Fellowships provide a full-time graduate/undergraduate summer stipend as well as funding for one year of research costs, combined with structured training for Fellows and their faculty Mentors in solution-focused innovation, technology commercialization and STEM entrepreneurship. The goals of the program, which is funded by a grant from the Washington Research Foundation, are to support new scientific discoveries, build institutional capacity for accelerating translation of the products of Western research into practice, and inclusively expand student engagement in research. For details see the Request for Proposals.