Grants

Part 1 – Grant Information Form

The Grant Information Form requests information necessary for the consideration of your proposal, including contact information, grant project dates, amount of the grant request, and a 150-word proposal abstract. The Grant Type to select is “Project.”

This form requires contact information for and signatures from: 

• The Project Director/s: The person/s responsible for providing narrative report on grants, typically the person/s overseeing the administration of the grant and writing the project proposal to apply for the grant.
• The Financial Contact: The person responsible for receiving the check and providing financial reports of expenditures for the institution. This should be a different person than the project director. 
• The Authorization Contact: The person authorized to sign grant contracts for the institution.

Part 2 – Proposal Narrative and Budget

No longer than 12 pages long (single-spaced), CV limited to 4 pages, and page numbers required.

The Project Proposal must follow an outline of the seven elements indicated below.

Successful proposals will include specific examples, demonstrate thoughtful reflection about the project’s presenting problem, identify and address relevant pedagogical questions, attend to the alignment of the design with the goals, and provide clear plans for evaluating, assessing, and responding to what was learned during the course of the project.

Project Proposal Outline

• Title of Proposed Project
  Give us a central idea of what the project will explore
• Framing Question or Problem
  A good framing question or problem can help you identify what you do not understand and articulate why you must pursue it. It can also help you identify what strategies and activities can be most helpful and who might collaborate in the work. Ask yourself: What do you want to know? What is the student learning issue at the heart of this project? What classroom practice will this project address? What is the pedagogical issue or problem that this project is seeking to address and why does it matter?
• Project Goals
  List the goals for this project. What do you hope to accomplish or learn? What will this grant help you to do that you couldn’t do without funding? At the conclusion of the grant project, what change will have occurred as a consequence of this grant project?
• Description of Activities
  What is the scope of work envisioned for this grant project? What activities will be planned and carried out? How will these specific activities meet the needs of your context and help those involved with the project explore particular teaching and learning challenges? Include a timeline of activities envisioned.
• Supportive Literature
  Briefly, describe what others have done when working with the pedagogical issues or question that you want to pursue. What literature have you consulted and how will that literature inform your project?
• Assessment, Evaluation, and Response
  How, when, and who will provide the midway assessment? How will you know if the grant activities are effective or whether the project should be revised? When the project is complete, how will you know that your objectives have been met? Who will be assessing what was learned? Who will be responding to what was learned, and how will they get this information? What connection will be made to a larger, public audience (if applicable)?

• Plan for Dissemination
  How will you disseminate what you learn through the grant project? Blogs, podcasts, essays, etc.? In what specific ways will you share what you’ve discovered through the grant project?

Line Item Budget and Budget Narrative
In consultation with your institution’s financial officer, build a budget to support the activities projected, delineating yearly estimates if requesting a multi-year grant. Provide a brief narrative in support of each line item expense. Make sure the budget is congruent with how expenses can be allocated at your institution.
Read: Grant Budget and Expense Guidelines (pdf)

Part 3 – Institutional Letter of Support

This letter should be written by the appropriate dean, department chair, provost, president, principal, or rector in order to demonstrate the institutional rationale and support for the project, as well as how the institution will respond to the things that will be learned during the grant project.

If the project director holds one of these offices, the letter of support should be written by someone higher in the institution. 

This letter must be signed on institutional letterhead, scanned and attached to the online application.

Policy on Deadlines for Program Deadlines

The program deadlines are meant to facilitate application by a wide array of participants, as well as create fairness in the selection process. Program deadlines also assist administrative staff who work to support each group and all programs.  The Wabash Center will, when we see the necessity, extend the deadline of an application process.  We will rarely, if ever, extend the deadline for individual requests.  We ask participants, as well as recommenders, to respect these important deadline boundaries.  Adherence to deadlines foster fair-mindedness and a spirit of collegiality. Should an issue need to be arbitrated, please be in touch with the Director of the Wabash Center.

Large Project Grant Orientation: May 14, 2025 1-4pm ET

Description:

This mandatory meeting is intended to better acquaint project leaders with Wabash Center staff and with the spectrum of projects in the grant cycle. During the conversation, grant leaders will:

1. describe their project’s vision, aims and implementation strategies;
2. get acquainted with Wabash reporting requirements;
3. confirm dissemination strategies for projects;
4. address ways their project might gain traction for institutional change in the context.

Grant funds can be spent on items and activities such as:

• Childcare, elder care, house sitting to support attendance to group gatherings
• Meals or groceries for gatherings
• Travel, meals, lodging (retreat center, hotel, conference center, rented house)
• Stipends (meager) for participation in the group
• Equipment, supplies, materials to support group meeting and discussions
• Honorariums for guest resource persons with group
• Entrance fees or tickets for cultural events, museums, concerts, etc.
• Germane services (e.g., coaching, gym memberships, spa, spiritual direction, workshop registrations, etc.)

Activities and items NOT Funded:

The Wabash Center generally does not fund:

• Research
• International travel
• Travel for attendance to disciplinary conferences
• The preparation of textbooks
• Research focused primarily on field content and only secondarily on teaching
• Publication of conference papers or books, or production costs of other media
• Stipends for writing the grant proposal or making application for the grant
• Home utilities should group convene online
• Items designated as gifts, presents, offerings or donations
• Travel, meals, lodging expenses should family or friends accompany participant on an extended conversation

Please note that the grants of the Wabash Center are not intended for the use of underwriting the ordinary, ongoing work of the professorate, much of which is already supported by the home institution or department. The grants funds are meant to be used to support and strengthen teaching and the teaching life. The above lists are not exhaustive. All projects and budget expenditures must be in alignment with the Wabash Center mission.

Wabash Center Mission

Successful grant proposals will demonstrate:

• A clear focus on an issue or question of teaching or the teaching life within higher education
• Readiness to learn on the part of the project director
• A set of project activities that will explore the central question or issue
• Alignment in its focus, goals, activities, and assessment
• An institutional readiness to listen and respond to what is discovered during the grant project
• A strategy to disseminate the learnings of the project within and/or beyond the school
• An allocation of grant monies for work the institution could not ordinarily do

Eligibility Requirements

The Wabash Center gives grants to accredited universities, colleges, or seminaries in the United States and Canada and occasionally to non-profit organizations providing services to improve teaching and learning at institutions of higher education. The project director will ordinarily be a full-time faculty member in religion or theology. In colleges or universities without a department of religion or theology, we will consider, on a case-by-case basis, project directors from other departments whose primary teaching responsibility is in the area of religion.

Grant Coaching

The Wabash Center understands our grants program as a part of our overall teaching and learning mission. We are interested in not only awarding grants to excellent proposals, but also in enabling faculty members to develop and hone their skills as grant writers.

We strongly encourage you to be in conversation with us as you develop your ideas for a grant project into a formal proposal. We will gladly give you feedback on your ideas and draft proposal.

There is no guarantee that a grant that has gone through our coaching process will be funded—funding decisions are made by a separate Advisory Committee—but we will help you present the project in the clearest and most coherent way.

Direct Questions to:

Sarah Farmer, Ph.D.
Associate Director
farmers@wabash.edu