Purpose
The Faculty Travel Grant Program is designed to help Florida State University's tenured and tenure-earning faculty members enhance their professional development by presenting the results of their research or creative activity at meetings either in-person or virtually, following University guidelines, with a national or international audience. The Program supports up to $1000 in travel support that may be applied to the costs of conference attendance and participation in the U.S. and up to $1500 in travel support for conferences held outside of the U.S. The Program is designed to give priority to professional travel that cannot be funded from other sources such as departmental budgets or research grants that include funds for such purposes.
Nature of Support
The Program will support the most economical and practical transportation, hotel and conference registration costs. (Meals, per diem and membership fees are not reimbursable through the Faculty Travel Grant.) The application form requests an actual quote on the transportation costs (if travel has not already occurred) or the actual costs (if travel has occurred by the time application is made to the Program) along with a description of any conditions attached to the fare. The Program encourages all applicants to find the most economical prices and reserves the right to support only part of the travel costs if the faculty committee charged with administering the Program finds that the applicant's travel costs were needlessly excessive. The Program will reimburse either an individual or a unit (department, college, institute, as appropriate) for the amount awarded. However, the following units will not be reimbursed by the Faculty Travel Grant Program: College of Medicine units, Foundation accounts and most C&G accounts. Applicants should contact the Provost's office prior to submitting an application for any clarification needed on this issue.
Qualifications
Applicants must hold a tenured or tenure-earning position on the faculty of Florida State University during the academic year in which the travel occurs. Individuals with "visiting" status are not eligible unless the "visiting" status is solely because the applicant is awaiting the appropriate visa from the federal government; in this case the application must be accompanied by a letter from the applicant's chair or dean confirming this situation. Retired faculty are not eligible.
The Program will only support the travel costs of the faculty member who is actually presenting the work. The Program will not support the costs for co-authors, regardless of affiliation. In special cases such as duet performances this limitation may be waived by the faculty committee, but it is the responsibility of the applicants in such cases to make a clear argument for that waiver.
The Program will support an individual's costs for only one meeting in a single academic year. Each faculty member is limited to making only one application to the Program. In certain circumstances an individual may attend two meetings on a single excursion, and the "one-meeting-a-year" limitation is not meant to apply to such a situation. It is the applicant's responsibility to decide the meeting for which support will be requested.
Once an application has been approved, no substitutions will be allowed; if an individual wishes to use the program’s funds to support a presentation other than the one for which the original application was submitted, he/she must submit an entirely new application prior to the application deadline.
Budget limitations in any academic year may require more stringent criteria for support. The Program may give priority to applicants who have not recently received this support. The applicant must list in which of the last three academic years she/he has received this support. The Program may prorate each approved applicant's request based on the total funds requested and the amount of funds available.
Types of Meetings For Which Support Is Available
The Program will support travel to present an individual's work at a variety of venues provided that the venue is a regularly scheduled one of national or international scope. These venues include regular or annual meetings of a national (US or another country's national society) or international professional society; quadrennial (or otherwise periodically occurring) international congresses that are sponsored by a number of national professional societies. Professional societies are usually defined as those that collect dues, have elected officers, and may have published journals or other outlets for scholarly work. These venues also include meetings sponsored by a government agency or industrial society if the meetings are of an academic nature and take place annually or biennially; juried competitions of a national or international scope that are held regularly; regular conferences on a specified topic at which attendance is by invitation only and is considered a prestigious accomplishment; and invited performances at regularly occurring meetings/festivals.
In general, the committee criteria specify that the money will be awarded to tenured or tenure-earning faculty presenting peer-reviewed academic research papers at national or international conferences. By definition, these papers will not include a "response," or roundtable paper.
The Program will support travel to present a poster only if all of the following criteria are fulfilled: (a) the meeting is of one of the types described above; (b) the participants are restricted to poster presentations, or else other forms of presentation are severely limited (that is, only 10% or so of presenter openings are for full papers); and (c) poster presentations are refereed for acceptance. It is the applicant's responsibility to provide specific evidence that a request for support for a poster presentation fulfills all of these criteria or to make a clear argument for the waiver of one or more of the criteria.
The Program will not support certain types of presentations. The Program will not support a presentation at a regional meeting or a meeting of a regional society even if there is some level of national or international participation. The Program will not support a presentation or series of presentations at other universities, museums, or institutions that are, in effect, an invited lecture or lecture series. The Program will not support travel to a meeting of experts interested in a narrowly circumscribed subject or area (e.g. a one-time symposium sponsored by a university or a department). The Program will not support attendance at a meeting solely to "chair" a session or to discharge the obligations incurred by holding office in the sponsoring professional society.
It is the responsibility of the applicant to ensure that the description of the venue for the presentation makes clear that the venue falls within the guidelines of the Program. Questions about eligibility should be addressed to the chair of the faculty committee charged with the administration of the Program.
Implementation
The Program has two rounds for application and support. The first round (fall) covers travel from July 1 through December 31. The second round (spring) covers travel from January 1 through June 30. Approximately half of the available funds will be assigned for awards in each round. It is the intent of the Program to distribute all available funds, so if applications in the second round do not use all of the funds set aside for those applications the committee will return to the unfunded applications from the first round and provide reimbursement until all funds have been expended.
It is the individual faculty member's responsibility to meet the application deadline for the appropriate period and to ensure that the application and all supporting material is complete and clear. The faculty committee will not consider incomplete applications. Questions concerning necessary information and supporting materials should be addressed to the chair of the faculty committee.
Application materials may be accepted provisionally IF the documentation is proven to be unavailable before the application deadline (i.e., conference is in late June and online conference program won’t be posted until May, etc.). While application may be provisionally accepted, funds will not be released until all required materials have been submitted.
Forward application and materials electronically in one set to the attention of the Provost's office, provost@fsu.edu.