¶¶Òõ̽̽

APLE awards provide up to $500 in support of expenses involved in credit-bearing undergraduate research and creative activities. Each year, up to twenty-four awards will be available to support such activities as travel to research libraries or other sites to gather data, expenses for supplies and so forth.

Application Deadlines:

• Fall Semester: October 31
• Spring Semester: February 15

Application Criteria

• Applications may be made twice yearly. Deadlines are October 31 and February 15 each year.
• Applicants must be full-time undergraduate students in the College of Arts and Sciences.
• Undergraduates doing research and creative projects for credit in collaboration with ¶¶Òõ̽̽ faculty members are eligible to apply.
• Students must have a sponsor in the College of Arts and Sciences.
• No student may receive more than one award during his/her undergraduate career.
• The maximum amount available for each award is $500. The College of Arts and Sciences will contribute up to $250 to the student's sponsoring department or program to be used solely for expenses related to the project. The department/program must match the amount contributed by the College.
• APLE funds are not available for internships or for expenses related to the dissemination of research results, such as conference attendance.

APLE Summer Stipends provide a summer salary of $3,000 for undergraduate students. Typically two stipends are awarded each year.

Application Deadline:

• April 1 each year.

Application Criteria

• Applicants must be full-time undergraduate students in the College of Arts and Sciences
• Undergraduates doing research and creative projects in collaboration with faculty mentors in the College of Arts and Sciences are eligible to apply.
• Research must be completed prior to graduation.
• No student may receive more than one summer stipend during his/her undergraduate career.
• Awards are $3000 [30 hours per week for 10 weeks].
• Students who have been awarded a summer stipend from the ¶¶Òõ̽̽ Office of Undergraduate Research are not eligible to receive an APLE Summer Stipend.

The Office of Undergraduate Research (OUR) provides several different funding opportunities for undergraduates currently enrolled at ¶¶Òõ̽̽. All require a ¶¶Òõ̽̽ faculty sponsor.

Mini Grants

The Mini Grants provide up to $500 for research expenses. Students may use the funds to cover the costs related to research and creative projects, such as disposable /consumable media for the lab or studio, printing, specialized software, admission fees, rental of equipment, or participant incentives. Students may not receive funds for living expenses during the academic year or for charges incurred for ¶¶Òõ̽̽ courses.

Students may receive one Mini and one Travel Award during each academic year.

Applications reviewed on a rolling basis and awards are made until funds are exhausted. Apply early!

OUR Travel Awards

OUR Travel Awards fund undergraduates for travel ($500 domestic and $1000 international) to conduct international research or to present at a professional conference. Awards may be used to pay for conference registration, food, transportation, parking, or lodging.

Students may receive one Mini and one Travel Award during each academic year.

Applications reviewed on a rolling basis and awards are made until funds are exhausted. Apply early!

Outstanding Research, Creative Activity, and Scholarship Award (ORCAS)

ORCAS provide a significant funding opportunity during the academic year for students pursuing truly distinctive, innovative, and original projects. They provide funding to cover research expenses up to $2500, plus an additional $1000 to present at a regional, national, or international conference.

Summer Research Awards

Summer Research Awards allow 20 students to focus on their research, creative or scholarly activities during the summer by providing a $3500 stipend and up to $1500 for research costs.

Brennan Summer Research Fellowship

The Brennan Summer Research Fellowship recognizes the top 2-3 summer research proposals, by providing a $3500 stipend, $1500 for research expenses, and travel money to present the students' research at a conference.

Dan Higgins was a professor in the Art Department at ¶¶Òõ̽̽ for 34 years (1969-2003). His work focused on the creation of photographs that explore cultural identities, lived conditions of place-based social communities, and political and social justice themes, based on a collaborative approach in which the images were created with the active participation of the people being photographed. The images were then exhibited in those communities to stimulate a broader dialogue about important social concerns. His projects were often focused on marginalized, vulnerable, and underrepresented communities in Vermont and elsewhere. As a teacher of ¶¶Òõ̽̽ undergraduates, he taught a popular course in photography that was deliberately cross-disciplinary and community-based, bringing students from a variety of disciplines together to use their creative skills to explore social communities in collaboration with each other and with the communities that were the subject of their interest.

The Award

The Community Engaged Arts and Humanities award invites ¶¶Òõ̽̽ students to engage in arts projects that center community. The award is intended to encourage students to ask and explore: How can art strengthen or build community? How can it illuminate issues a community faces? How can art heal or connect different communities? How can art be a tool of advocacy or social justice?

The ways in which a student defines community and which community groups they wish to engage with are open but must involve non-academic communities. The student must define well in their application how they are conceiving of community and how their project will achieve a definable goal related to community/communities. Projects should be collaborative and involve working with community members or other relevant stakeholders. Preference will be given to projects that engage with communities whose stories are underrepresented or poorly represented in mainstream culture, and to projects that focus on Vermont, but other projects will be considered. The resulting project should include some form of public outcome—an exhibition, performance, lecture, etc.

The goals of this award are to:

1. Encourage and support students who wish to devise arts or humanities-based projects around some aspect of community, with preference for historically marginalized or underrepresented communities, and/or communities in Vermont.
2. Foster innovation in the arts and humanities by engaging with and responding to stories and issues that are important to communities, especially underrepresented communities and other communities in Vermont or elsewhere.
3. Encourage and support the creation of publicly engaged creative and scholarly projects resulting in exhibitions, performances, or other forms of public presentation, especially those that directly involve members of those communities.

The maximum amount of the award is $2,000.

Use of the Award

To support student projects in the arts and humanities interacting with members of non-academic communities. Partnerships between students and/or students and faculty are welcome and encouraged. The award can be used to support project expenses, including consumable equipment, supplies, travel, advertising, scholarships, wages, honoraria, space rental, professional development costs, or other general related project expenses. Individual meals are not allowed, although food-related expenses for a community gathering are. If a faculty member is involved, funds cannot be used to pay a faculty member’s salary. Funds are available for three semesters from the time of the initial project award and must be expended before the student graduates or otherwise separates from ¶¶Òõ̽̽.

Eligibility

Fully enrolled ¶¶Òõ̽̽ students. Faculty members (including tenure-track and lecturers) can also access these funds IF they are partnering with a student or students.

Application Process

• There is no form for the application. The following information should be sent as one document via email to soa@uvm.edu:
• A narrative fully describing the project and demonstrating how it will meet the award description and allowed uses outlined above. The narrative should:
  • Describe the group with which you hope to engage, what interests you about it, and what kinds of relationships you might already have with members of that community.
  • Explain the strategy you plan to use to engage with the community.
  • Explain what academic background you have that prepares you to execute the project.
  • Explain how your final project might directly involve community members in its execution, and how the project will be shared (exhibition, performance, lecture, etc.)
• A budget detailing the project expenses. Awards do not have to ask for the maximum $2,000 amount.
• Students must also submit names of two faculty who can be contacted as references for the student and feasibility and merits of the student’s proposed project.

¶Ù±ð²¹»å±ô¾±²Ô±ðÌý

Applications are rolling.

Requirements for Recipients

• Acknowledge the following in ALL event announcements and/or publications resulting from the project: Dan Higgins Community-Engaged Arts and Humanities Fund and the School of the Arts.
• Submit a report detailing completed activities within 1-month of project completion. Please include discussion of how and why the community-engagement goals were/were not met.
• Participate in a presentation of the work (actual and/or documented) for an event that Prof. Higgins will be invited to.