Wild Card Awards
What: Awards of up to $5000 for projects with a humanities emphasis
Who: UCR faculty
When: Award period is July 1, 2020 through June 30, 2021
Deadline to apply: December 16, 2019
Wild Card Awards support new humanities-related projects at UC Riverside or in the surrounding community that fall outside the parameters of other CIS funding calls. Surprise us!
Awardees are generally expected to seek matching campus or external contributions up to 25% of the awarded amount.
Submit the online application form and all required documentation by midnight, December 16, 2019. All required documents should be prepared in advance and uploaded to the form at the time of submission. Incomplete submissions will not be considered.
*Note: You will not be able to save your progress once you start the application. We suggest that you preview the questions beforehand.
Complete applications include:
1. Project title and abstract (300 word limit).
2. Description of proposed project: Limit your proposal to 1000 words or less, not including bibliography or CVs. When drafting your proposal, reflect on the criteria outlined in the other sections of this call, particularly under Evaluation. Identify your goals and objectives and make clear the interdisciplinary and/or collaborative aspects of the project. Provide a tentative schedule of events, as applicable to the project. Upload your proposal to the application form as a PDF or Word document.
3. Budget and Budget Justification: Itemize all expected costs associated with the project or research activity. Include explanations of how estimates are calculated and a line-by-line justification for the necessity of each expense as it relates to your project goals. If the proposal is awarded at a lower amount than requested, how will you adjust your project scope? Describe cost-sharing, matching funds, cosponsorships, and other funding, committed or pending. Enter budgets and justifications on the CIS Project Budget template. Download budget template.
4. List of organizers and confirmed participants: Submit short (2 page) CVs of confirmed participants. Identify the roles for each person included. A list of potential invitees (with affiliations) should also be included. Combine CVs and participant list as a single PDF or Word document and upload to the form.
In addition to humanities-emphasis, interdisciplinary collaboration, and location, the advisory committee looks for intellectually sound, clear, and well-organized proposals that, as the format of the project allows, represent the following values and standards:
Project Focus
- The importance of the questions, issues, or problems the project seeks to address.
- The capacity of the project to enhance or develop insights into or an understanding of these questions, issues, or problems.
- The extent to which the project has appropriately taken account of existing research and scholarship.
- The appropriateness, effectiveness, and feasibility of the proposed approach or research methods.
Participants
- The ability of the participants to complete or make a significant advancement on the project.
- The inclusion of opportunities in the project for junior and less senior faculty, under-represented voices and viewpoints, and/or partners in other institutions or community organizations.
- Opportunities for graduate and undergraduate students to meet with and/or work alongside faculty and distiguished guests.
- Formats and venues that are open and accessible to campus and community audiences.
Management
- The clarity of lines of responsibility and accountability.
- The inclusion of a realistic timetable that includes milestones.
- A clear understanding of the relationship between the funds sought and the significance and quality of the projected results of the project.
- A scalable project that can accommodate less funding if required, or with potential to successfully leverage and/or draw more funding through cosponsorships, additional grants, or other fund-raising approaches.
Dissemination and Impact
- The appropriateness and effectiveness of the proposed dissemination methods.
- The amount of attention to possible beneficiaries of the project and to ways of engaging with them.
- Creativity of the format, themes, presentations, or methods
- Potential of the proposed topic to lay groundwork for and inspire future research, programs, grants, or community relationships.
Final awards are based on available funding. In order to support as many projects as possible, you may be offered an award for less than requested. Lower awards do not reflect on the quality or importance of the work being conducted.
Awardees are generally expected to seek matching campus or external contributions up to 25% of the awarded amount.
Major purchases of non-expendable equipment, course buy-outs, stipends, GSR/student stipends, tuition or fees, staffing, alcohol, personal conference travel and/or annual meetings or professional organizations and groups are not covered by this award. Reusable supplies and equipment purchased with these funds remain the property of the Center.
All project transactions and processes must adhere to applicable/relevant UC, UCR, and Center policies. Expenses must be incurred within the award period and all unexpended funds are surrendered at the end of that period. Extensions of the grant timeframe are rare, but may be requested in writing to the Center director. Expenditures must be within the categories listed in the proposal budget. Written permission is required for budget adjustments or changes to the project scope prior to spending funds.
Administrative and event support is provided by the Center for Ideas and Society. Where possible, projects should make use of the Center’s facilities in College Building South.
Proposals that involve personal interviews or experiments with human subjects must be review and approved by the Institutional Review Board first. For forms and details, visit http://or.ucr.edu/ORI.aspx. Such proposals should indicate if IRB approval has been granted and the protocol number. Funds are released only after approval is obtained.
At the close of your project, we will request a final narrative report that assesses the outcomes (both planned and unexpected) and compares the project as proposed with the project as experienced. What progress was made toward your stated goals? What questions were uncovered or resolved? What challenges did you face? What new areas of research and collaboration were opened? Reports should include a list of participants, audiences reached, and impact on students, classes, teaching, publications, community service, and other methods of research engagement and service.
In papers, conference presentations, or other methods of sharing the results of your project, please acknowledge the support of the Center for Ideas and Society.
From time to time, we may share your name, project title, and/or portions of your narrative report on our website or other reports and promotional materials. This serves our mission by sharing the research of our college with the wider public and helps us emphasize the importance and relevance of humanities-focused projects.
For questions, please contact Katharine Henshaw, Associate Director, at katharine.henshaw@ucr.edu.