The Colonial Academic Alliance is turning to true innovators – faculty and staff at our member institutions – to generate powerful ideas that creatively address the challenges we face in higher education.
The Alliance will support and champion these ideas through the newly created Innovate/Collaborate (IN/CO) Grant Program, providing grants of $5,000—$20,000 per year (for two years) for initiatives that: address pressing policy challenges in higher education; fuel collaboration between institutions; enhance institutional excellence; and promote innovation in intellectual inquiry.
***IN/CO Short Form Applications are due on October 13, 2017 by 5:00PM. The application is available for download under the “Application Instructions” section below.***
PRIORITY FUNDING AREAS
IN/CO Grants will support multi-institutional teams of faculty and staff in the exploration and development of creative approaches and best practices that positively impact student success, advance scholarship, and promote the dissemination of best practices in one of the following priority funding areas:
- Innovative teaching & learning
- High impact practices
- Civic engagement
- Entrepreneurial education
- Student-athlete initiatives
FUNDING GUIDELINES
IN/CO Grants will fund actionable, scalable initiatives that are:
- Designed to contribute lessons or best practices for the higher education community
- Marketable for future academic publication or presentation at conferences
- Attractive to future foundation or sponsor funding beyond the IN/CO Grant Program
REQUIRED INSTITUTIONAL MATCH
If selected for an IN/CO grant award, your institution must be willing to provide in-kind or monetary matching.
APPLICATION INSTRUCTIONS
Interested faculty and staff at Alliance member institutions are invited to complete an IN/CO Short Form application (download using link below or click here: IN/CO Short Form Application), briefly introducing a topic, idea, or challenge that they wish to explore in collaboration with other member institutions. Please clearly complete each field of the application, succinctly making a case for funding.
***IN/CO Short Form Applications are due on October 13, 2017 by 5:00PM.***
Please email completed form (and any relevant attachments) to Alliance Executive Director Lindsey Interlante via email at li@caa-academics.org. Use the subject “IN/CO Short Form Application.”
SELECTION PROCESS
Alliance staff will vet proposals for compliance with the guidelines outlined in the IN/CO Short Form application. Complaint proposals will be presented to the Executive Committee of the Provosts’ Council, who will select a slate of finalists. Finalists will work with Alliance staff to identify potential partners at other Alliance institutions, respond to any questions or concerns put forth by the Executive Committee, develop a grant budget, and complete a finalized project plan for approval.
***The Provosts’ Council will reach a final decision on which applicants to fund by November 22, 2017. All proposals will receive a response from Alliance staff by December 1, 2017.***
CONNECTING INSTITUTIONAL PARTNERS
IN/CO Grants are intended to fund teams of faculty and staff from two or more Alliance member institutions. Given the diversity and geographic breadth of the Alliance, faculty and staff are not expected to forge these partnerships on their own. Executive Director Lindsey Interlante will work with finalists to identify appropriate institutional partners for their proposed initiative. Applicants are welcome to suggest possible institutional partners, but selection as a finalist does not guarantee that you will work with your suggested partner institution.
COMPATIBILITY WITH ALLIANCE MISSION
Projects selected for an IN/CO Grant award will be compatible with our mission:
The Colonial Academic Alliance facilitates collaboration and communication across member institutions, engaging faculty, staff, and students in meaningful initiatives that challenge the status quo, enrich the academic environment, and advance student success.
EVALUATION CRITERIA
IN/CO Grants provide teams with the opportunity to engage in exploratory research and scholarship, so applications do not need to reflect every specific detail of your intended project. Successful applications will demonstrate that:
- Your intended initiative is strongly aligned with one or more Alliance priority areas;
- Your intended initiative will directly address a challenging issue in higher education;
- Your team has the capacity, qualifications, and institutional support to successfully implement your intended project;
- Your team has an intentional and feasible plan to use the grant funds during the two-year award period;
- If selected for an IN/CO grant award, your institution must be willing to provide in-kind or monetary matching.
ADDITIONAL INFORMATION AND QUESTIONS
Applicants wishing to receive additional information on IN/CO Grants or ask questions should contact Alliance Executive Director Lindsey Interlante at li@caa-academics.org.
Ben Evans is a physicist by education and a biomedical engineer by mistake. He earned his PhD in Physics at UNC Chapel Hill where he built an artificial ciliary system which mimicked the dynamics of human lung cilia. The flexible magnetic materials which he engineered for this project form the basis for much of his current work as an associate professor at Elon University. At Elon, Evans has worked with undergraduate colleagues on projects spanning the sciences, including ligand-targeted magnetic microspheres for drug delivery, magnetic nanospheres for in vivo hyperthermia therapeutics, and structured magnetic materials for soft robotics. He will discuss current work in these areas and highlight his collaborations with undergraduate researchers.
Amy L. Allocco is Associate Professor of Religious Studies at Elon University in North Carolina. Allocco earned her PhD from Emory University in 2009 and also holds degrees from Harvard Divinity School and Colgate University. She is the 2012 recipient of Elon’s College of Arts and Sciences Excellence in Teaching Award and previously held the University’s Distinguished Emerging Scholar professorship in Religious Studies. Trained both as an ethnographer of South Asian religions and in approaches to Hindu textual traditions, Allocco specializes in performance and ritual studies as well as gender and religion. Her research focuses on vernacular Hinduism, especially contemporary Hindu ritual traditions and women’s religious practices in the South Indian state of Tamil Nadu, where she has been studying and conducting ethnographic fieldwork for more than 20 years. Allocco’s publications to date have concentrated on South India’s snake goddess traditions and the repertoire of ritual therapies performed to mitigate nāga dōṣam, a malignant horoscopic condition that causes delayed marriage and infertility. In 2013 she received The Journal of Feminist Studies in Religion’s Elisabeth Schüssler Fiorenza New Scholar Award for an article focused on the narrative strategies and ritual authority of a female Hindu healer. Along with Brian Pennington she co-edited a volume titled Ritual Innovation: Strategic Interventions in South Asian Religion, which will be forthcoming from SUNY Press this year. With fellowship support from Fulbright-Nehru, the National Endowment for the Humanities, and the American Institute of Indian Studies, Allocco spent the 2015-16 academic year in Chennai working on a new research project, titled Domesticating the Dead: Invitation and Installation Rituals in Tamil South India. Her ethnography investigates the ongoing ritual relationships that Hindus maintain with their dead and focuses on ceremonies to honor deceased relatives called pūvāṭaikkāri (“the woman wearing flowers”), including both those performed annually to seek generalized blessings and occasional, elaborate invitation rituals in which ritual drummers summon the spirit, convince it to possess a human host, and beg it to “come home” as a protective family deity.
Tom Mould is Professor of Folklore and Anthropology at Elon University and Director of the Honors Program. He is the author of three books—Choctaw Prophecy: A Legacy of the Future (2003), Choctaw Tales (2004), and Still, the Small Voice: Revelation, Personal Narrative and the Mormon Folk Tradition (2011)—and co-author of two more—The Individual and Tradition (2011) and Latter-day Lore: Mormon Folklore Studies (2013). His research areas include oral narrative, sacred narrative, American Indian studies, Mormon studies, ethnography, performance studies, and contemporary legend. He has produced video documentaries for public television on folk art and culture in Indiana, Kentucky and North Carolina. His newest book Overthrowing the Queen: The Real Stories of Welfare in America is due out in 2018.
