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CoA+A Research Support

CoA+A aims to support the research and creative practices of our faculty and staff by helping identify funding opportunities, helping prepare proposals, and providing support in managing awards. We are also a liaison between the college and the Office of Research Services, the Center for Entrepreneurship and Innovation, and other research-related counterparts across the campus. In these ways, we aim to address our Strategic Planning goals and the university’s mission to facilitate the growth of faculty research and creative practices. If you need support, have a request, would like to share a grant funding opportunity to be listed, would like to share information about your own research, etc., please complete this form.

The grant opportunities below can be applied for through Niner Research within the Division of Research.

FOUR OF THE LARGEST FEDERAL GRANT ORGANIZATIONS THAT FUND RESEARCH RELATED TO OUR COLLEGE INITIATIVES


1. The National Endowment for the Arts (NEA) awards thousands of grants throughout the United States each year!  Many of these go to first-time applicants. See additional information and access the full guidelines.

2. National Institutes of Health (NIH): In the past few years, NIH has released funding opportunities specific to Research on Music and Health that require a music specialist to be a member of the research team. We are awaiting news on this call being extended for 2024. Currently, PAR-23-256 NCCIH includes funding for Feasibility Trials.  

  • NIH has current funding opportunities covering complementary health approaches including practices and interventions involving psychological music-based interventions or a combination of psychological and physical such as yoga, tai chi, dance therapies, and some forms of art therapies. 
  • NIH has updated its policies regarding its required Other Support documentation. Historically, NIH has not required the current proposal or award the Other Support document is associated with to be included in the Other Support document, but that has now changed.  While not yet updated in all places on the NIH website (we have been told they are working on that), we received confirmation from NIH's Office of Policy for Extramural Research Administration (OPERA) that the Other Support document should now include the current proposal or award. 

3. National Science Foundation (NSF): The National Science Foundation has released its new Proposal & Award Policies & Procedures Guide (PAPPG) which is effective for all proposals due on or after January 30, 2023. Please note that Atkins Library provides support for the development of data management plans and has a website with online tools to help you with that process.

  • Beginning on October 23, 2023 NSF will only accept Biographical Sketches and Current and Pending Support documents produced via SciENcv (Science Experts Network Curriculum Vitae). No other formats will be accepted as of that date, including the currently accepted fillable PDF formats for those documents. SciENcv produces NSF-compliant PDF versions of the biographical sketch and current and pending support information. We encourage faculty to begin to set up their accounts and profiles in SciENcv now, and have attached NSF's FAQs regarding the use of SciENcv to this message.  Additional details, guides, and tutorials are available at the SciENcv website.  NSF's guidelines for the required documents for Senior Personnel on proposals are available here.

4. The National Endowment for the Humanities (NEH): Founded in 1965, more than 64,000 grants have been funded through this federal organization. See below for additional information and access the full guidelines at https://www.arts.gov/grants.

RESEARCH FUNDING OPPORTUNITIES SPECIFIC TO OUR COLLEGE UNITS LISTED WITH APPLICATION DEADLINES

Architecture:

Arts, Performing and Visual:

Dance:

Music:

Theater:

Visual Arts:

COLLEGE OPPORTUNITIES

​CoA+A Research Centers/Labs/Libraries: The College of Arts + Architecture supports research spaces to promote the depth of faculty and student scholarship and most importantly to provide opportunities to collaborate with partners in creative thinking and expression. Many times these spaces help foster the development of faculty research teams that apply for large research grant initiatives. The directors, physical spaces, and other materials are available to support faculty research related to the unique focus of each center or lab. Drop by one of the spaces listed below, or fill out a request form to get in touch with the center or lab director. 

ArtXSci: The UNC Charlotte Art and Science Initiative (ArtXSci) foster collaborations between faculty in CoA+A and scholars in STEM fields with the goal of cultivating active/intensive exchange and sustained dialogue among those engaged in artistic and scientific inquiry within the University and Charlotte. These were first introduced in 2022 and we hope to provide a Request for Proposals in 2023. So, now is the time to begin thinking about a possible proposal. Learn more.  

CoA+A Research Fund: CoA+A Funding program is designed to provide initial financial support to faculty and staff to develop research and/or creative projects that would otherwise be difficult to initiate. Given the college’s recent “New Global South” initiative, this funding opportunity is being updated and additional information will be provided soon.

Vibrant Ecologies of Research Online Peer-reviewed Art+Design Research Journal: In this special collection of Ground Works, artists and designers explore “vibrant ecologies of research, deepening our understanding of the institutional, social, and epistemological systems that effectively weave arts-based inquiry into the scholarly fabric of research.” This is a great publication venue for our faculty. Learn more.

Reassignment of Duties University Policy: View the policy here.

PROPOSAL DEVELOPMENT RESOURCES
 

Writing letters of inquiry 
Today most foundations prefer a proposal letter or a letter of inquiry rather than a full grant application. They do this in order to ensure a researcher’s topic aligns with their giving priorities. Below are some helpful articles on writing effective letters of inquiry.

Writing Grant Proposals

  • Guide for Writing a Funding Proposal: Prepared by S. Joseph Levine, Michigan State University; provides hints and examples of each proposal section.
  • Grantspace.org Proposal Writing Courses: Courses include Introduction to Proposal Writing and Proposal Writing Boot Camp.  They also offer a Government Funding: Writing the Proposal self-paced course, and a Guide to Proposal Writing Audiobook.  The costs for the courses varies, but some are free. 
  • All About Grants Podcast: Although prepared by the National Institutes of Health, there is a wealth of information here that can be applied to any proposal.  Topics include “Telling Your Story,” “Using Plain Language for Application Titles, Abstracts….,” “Budget Basics,” “Human Subjects Risk and Protection,” “Grant Writing for New Investigators,” and “Assembling the Right Team.”
  • Grants 101 (Federal Grant Lifecycle): The training provides an overview of a grant award from submission to closeout.
  • IES Research Funding Opportunities On-Demand Webinars: The Institute of Education Sciences hosts a series of on-demand webinars for those interested in their funding opportunities.  The webinars are presented by the National Center for Special Education Research (NCSER) and the National Center for Education Research (NCER).  Webinars include IES Grant Writing Workshop, Research Training Programs in the Education Sciences, and NCSER Research Training for Early Career Development and Mentoring.  Both the video and the transcript is available.
  • Grant Writing Tips Sheets by the National Institutes of Health: Prepared by the National Institutes of Health, but provides valuable tips for preparing/writing a proposal to submit to a federal agency. 
  • Education Resources Information Center (ERIC): ERIC provides a comprehensive, easy-to-use, searchable internet-based bibliographic and full-text database of education research.  The information is used by educators, researchers, and the general public.

The Carolina Population Center

The Carolina Population Center, a population research center located at UNC-Chapel Hill, recently opened a branch of the Triangle Federal Statistical Research Data Center, which is part of the Federal Statistical Research Data Center (FSRDC) program. 

The RDC is free for all researchers (faculty and graduate students) affiliated with a UNC System school.

Under this program, the Census Bureau allows researchers with approved proposals to perform statistical analysis on non-public microdata from the Census Bureau’s economic, health, and demographic censuses and surveys. These datasets are among the largest and most important sources of statistical information in the U.S. and many of them can only be accessed through a FSRDC. There are many great resources available on the center: 

 

Belk College of Business Faculty Research Profile

The Belk College of Business has put together a Faculty Research Profile with the aim of stimulating collaborative research. Such collaborations may occur at multiple levels, including among faculty within and between departments, with graduate students, with faculty from other colleges at UNC Charlotte, and also with faculty from other schools. 

Podcasts and Other Resources

Resources for New Faculty

For new faculty, Hanover Research has shared a recording and slides from their November 2022 Webinar – Funding Landscape for Early Career Research. They each cover some topics of interest, such as: 

  • A review of major federal and foundation grant programs designed to support early career faculty research
  • Major trends and themes among early career faculty grant programs
  • Strategies for identifying the best fit opportunities for your experience level and field
  • What a 5-year research plan might look like

Resources for Working with Students