Funding Opportunities

These are resources that PERCoGS is aware of, but there are many more. Please contact us with additional resources to add to this list. In addition to the grant opportunities listed here, there are many institution-specific grants. For example, your department, graduate school, and graduate union may all have travel grants that you can apply for. Don't forget to tap your local resources!

Research grants:

NSF Graduate Research Fellowship Program

This is the big daddy of research grants for doc students. 3 years of support at $34k/yr. You must apply in your first two years of graduate school. Competitive and prestigious.

PERLOC Scholar-in-Residence

PERLOC is awarding small grants to PERTG members in support of a faculty member, postdoc, or graduate student visiting another research group. This Scholar-in-Residence (SIR) program seeks to assist scholars in crossing institutional boundaries to acquire and share the skills and knowledge that promote rigorous physics education research. These grants can go up to $2,500.

PERTG Mini-Grants

PERLOC is awarding a small number of mini-grants of up to $2500 to members of PERTG to support projects benefiting the PER community.

AERA Dissertation Grants

AERA invites education-related dissertation proposals using NCES, NSF, and other federal databases. Dissertation Grants are available for advanced doctoral students and are intended to support the student while writing the doctoral dissertation. Applications are encouraged from a variety of disciplines, such as but not limited to, education, sociology, economics, psychology, demography, statistics, and psychometrics. Up to $20k for 1 year.

Jack Kent Cooke Dissertation Fellowship Award

The Jack Kent Cooke Dissertation Fellowship Award supports advanced doctoral students who are completing dissertations that further the understanding of the educational pathways and experiences of high-achieving, low-income students. We seek to provide funding for doctoral candidates whose work informs and advances the following populations/aspects of our mission:

    high-achieving students from low-income backgrounds, and/or

    students who demonstrate the potential for achievement, and/or

    the conditions that promote high achievement (e.g., school settings, interventions, policies).

This award is for $25k for 1 year.

National Academy of Education/Spencer Dissertation Foundation Fellowship

The Dissertation Fellowship Program seeks to encourage a new generation of scholars from a wide range of disciplines and professional fields to undertake research relevant to the improvement of education. These $25,000 fellowships support individuals whose dissertations show potential for bringing fresh and constructive perspectives to the history, theory, or practice of formal or informal education anywhere in the world.

This highly competitive program aims to identify the most talented researchers conducting dissertation research related to education. The Dissertation Fellowship program receives many more applications than it can fund. This year, up to 600 applications are anticipated and about 25 fellowships will be awarded.

East Asia & Pacific Summer Institutes 

The National Science Foundation International Science & Engineering section would like to make you aware of an opportunity for U.S. graduate students to participate in research experiences in summer 2014 through the East Asia & Pacific Summer Institutes (EAPSI) program. EAPSI supports 200-205 graduate students each year to do research in the lab of their choice in any of seven locations: Australia, China, Japan, Korea, New Zealand, Singapore or Taiwan.  Each institute has a fixed start and end date, and includes a pre-departure orientation near NSF and an in-country language and culture orientation. An EAPSI award includes a $5,000 stipend and round trip air ticket provided by NSF, and a living allowance provided by NSF’s counterpart funding agency in the host location. The program is open to U.S. citizens and permanent residents enrolled in research-oriented graduate programs in NSF-funded STEM fields. The application deadline is November 25, 2013.

An Informational Webinar will be conducted on Thursday, October 10, 2013, at 1:00 pm ET; visit www.nsf.gov/eapsi for information on how to join the Webinars. Passcode is EAPSI2014.

Travel grants:

SPS Travel Awards

A limited number of SPS Travel Awards, on the order of $200 each, will be offered to help fund SPS members presenting their research at a national meeting of the professional societies in the AIP federation.

PERTG Conference Scholarship

PERLOC is awarding a finite number of small grants of up to $500 based on a combination of need and merit to members of PERTG to defray professional costs associated with attending and presenting at conferences.

Duncan McBride PER Travel Scholarship

This award is for AAPT Summer Meeting travel scholarship for graduate students, postdocs, two-year college faculty, and/or those transitioning into PER. Applications to this scholarship are submitted through the PERTG mini-grant solicitation.

APS Forum on Graduate Student Affairs Travel Award for Excellence in Graduate Research

This is a travel grant for graduate students who are APS members. It does not sound like it's for PER people, but they've funded travel for AAPT conferences before. The grants are for $500 and don't explicitly require that you're presenting.

ESERA Early Career Researcher Travel Awards (Note: Must be a member of the European Science Education Research Association)

This grant is for doc students or recently minted PhD's to visit to European universities. The grant is for 500-1000 Euros.