The purpose of the Seed Grant Program is to provide social science faculty with small grants to support the creation of preliminary evidence for external grant proposals. The Seed Grant Program can provide up to $5,000 to support small-scale pilot research; secondary data analysis; systematic literature reviews; or other small, self-contained research projects. Examples of expenditures might include a graduate or undergraduate hourly appointment, data access costs, software purchases, research participant incentives, or online sample fees.

The purpose of the Development Grant Program is to support faculty who are planning and writing external grant proposals either: (a) as sole-investigators, or, (b) in multi-investigator collaborations. The Development Grant Program can provide up to $2,500 to sole-investigators and up to $5,000 to multi-investigator collaborations to work with grant-writing companies and developmental editors to develop viable external grant applications. Larger grants may be made where warranted (e.g., for first-time NSF CAREER submissions; for very large collaborative projects).

Tenure system faculty (at either the assistant, associate, or full professor level) with more than 0% appointment in one of the social science departments in LAS (Anthropology, Communication, Political Science, Sociology, Economics, Criminology, Law & Justice, and Psychology) are eligible to apply. Social scientists in the departments of Gender and Women’s Studies, Global Asian Studies, Black Studies, and Latin American and Latino Studies are also welcome to apply.

The purpose of this meeting is to help applicants understand the process of grant development consulting, and to help match applicants with the most fitting coaches to develop successful external applications. The purpose of the meeting with the CSSR chair is not to pre-screen internal applications but to facilitate the best possible internal application before it goes to the committee for consideration.