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The University of Texas at Austin

COLA Investment Fund

College of Liberal Arts

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Funding for faculty research expenses in the humanities and social sciences

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The College of Liberal Arts (COLA) administers the COLA Investment Fund (CIF) to fund and support COLA faculty members engaged in scholarship in the broad areas of the humanities and the social sciences. This funding is intended to help faculty cover lower-level expenses that arise over the course of a project (e.g., licensing fees, archive and field travel, project-related equipment). As such, CIF funds should not serve as the primary funds for a project and are best employed in conjunction with external funding. The goal is to help COLA faculty start or complete projects with unanticipated or unbudgeted but necessary expenses.

  • About the Award
    • Requests for funding are typically limited to a maximum of $3,000 in any given year
    • Applications will be accepted—and funding decisions made—on a rolling basis
    • Although not required, the following considerations may be used to prioritize applications:
      • Use of the award to supplement past or current external funding or as a foundation for future proposals for external funding
      • Collaborative and especially interdisciplinary projects
      • Projects involving graduate or undergraduate students in the scholarship
  • How to Apply 

    Complete this application form which includes the following:

    • Project title
    • Project abstract (250 words or less)
    • Description of the need for funding
    • Proposed project start and end dates
    • Total requested amount and itemized budget details (Note: Any changes to the approved budget will require the Research Dean’s approval.)
    • Other external funding received, pending, and future requests
    • Signature of applicant that the application is not recycled and will not be recycled from other internal initiatives that were not funded
       
  • Eligibility

    All tenure-track and professional-track faculty with Principal Investigator status and with primary appointments in COLA are eligible to apply, with the following conditions:

    • Receipt of funding is limited to once per academic year and no more than three times in any five-year period
    • After receipt, recipients are not eligible to re-apply for future funding for the same project
    • Faculty with endowed chairs or professorships or who have other discretionary research funds (e.g., startup funds granted by COLA) are not eligible to apply
    • Faculty cannot apply for expenses on projects that have received funding from other internal funding initiatives from COLA or UT (e.g., Humanities Research Awards, Subvention Grants, Research and Creative Grants, Special Research Grants, etc.)
  • Ineligible Expenses 
    • Researcher’s salary or fringe benefits
    • Any costs related to dissemination of the completed research
    • General-purpose computer equipment or software (e.g., laptops, Microsoft Word, etc.)
    • Travel or registration costs for professional conferences, meetings, or symposia
    • Professional membership fees
    • Entertainment expenses
    • Office supplies unless specifically required for the proposed project
  • Other Considerations 
    • Funds most commonly will be distributed as a reimbursement by the faculty member’s departmental staff
    • Awardees will be responsible for documenting to COLA the distribution of the funds and reporting on promised outcomes by the end of the project period
    • Receipt of funding comes with the agreement that COLA may feature awardee’s projects on their websites and/or in communications about institutional investments in humanities and social science scholarship
    • Awardees may be asked to review future applications to the program

Questions? Contact the COLA Research Support Office at laresearch@austin.utexas.edu.