Frequently Asked Questions

Yes, but you must submit your request under the appropriate category of grant support described in the guidelines. You must also justify how your project aligns with the category under which your proposal is submitted.

You may not apply as the lead PI, but you may serve as a key participant (i.e., co-investigator or project co-director) on a Research and Artistry grant application led by an eligible PI. Only tenure track faculty are eligible to serve as the lead PI of a Research and Artistry grant, but co-investigators do not have to be tenure-track faculty.

Yes, as long as you did not also have Research and Artistry funding the year before via a new award or an extension of a previously issued award.

No, because you have had Research and Artistry funding from new awards and extensions for the past two years.

No. Expenses related to attending conferences (i.e., travel, lodging, registration) are not allowed. Only travel required to conduct your project is permitted. Your proposal must clearly justify all travel funding requests and explain exactly how the travel is required to complete your project. Conference travel funding will be removed from the total budget for awarded projects. Travel vouchers submitted to RIPS for conference travel will be returned to the department and will not be paid by the Research and Artistry award.

You may apply in the facilitation category if external funding for your work is limited or if you need funding to complete work on an externally funded project after funding has lapsed. The facilitation grant justification section of the proposal should justify why the proposal qualifies as a facilitation grant by clearly explaining why external funding support is not feasible for the project to be conducted or was inadequate for the project to be completed.

No. Whereas you are not required to report any history of extramural funding, you will not be penalized for demonstrating success at obtaining funding from the limited sources available to your discipline.

Proposals that include materials not specifically allowed by the guidelines will not be reviewed by the committee. Attachments confirming the commitment of external collaborators are allowed; letters of support are not allowed.

You may retrieve this list from the InfoEd database by accessing the Standard Reports. View the instructions.

You can be the lead PI on no more than one proposal and a key participant on no more than two proposals (regardless of category). You may only request summer salary in one proposal in an amount not to exceed $4,500.

Collaboration is allowed, even encouraged in the Research and Artistry program. However, funding to external entities in support of collaboration is limited to contractual payments to another organization for services not available at NIU. Direct payment to individuals (including but not limited to faculty or students at other universities) is not allowed. A sub-award to another institution to complete a portion of the proposed project is also not allowed. Payments to external collaborators should require a purchase order with an institution vs payment to an individual or a contract to complete any portion of the work that could be completed by personnel or facilities at NIU.

Below are a few examples in each category:

Opportunity Grants:

• A faculty member in Marketing seeks funding to create a database relevant to research questions about a particular industry cluster. Creation of the database represents one of the initial steps in a long-range plan to establish a consortium where private partners pay to have access to raw and/or analyzed data. The formed partnerships and associated investment sustain the scholarly effort over time through the provision of resources and the generation of new research questions.
• A faculty member seeks funding to investigate and quantify the role of groundwater in water resources and how the groundwater is impacted by a warming climate. The project provides preliminary research results to be included in an external proposal to NSF for a larger grant to examine larger bodies of water at a regional scale.
• A faculty member seeks funding to investigate changes in a mitochondrial protein following intense exercise in prediabetes patients. The project informs the connection between exercise, prediabetes, and cardiovascular fitness and provides pilot data for a larger external grant application to NIH to fund a clinical trial examining the prevention and treatment of prediabetes and diabetes patients through exercise.

Facilitation Grants:

• A faculty member plans to use qualitative research methods to study how workflows influence employee attitudes in hierarchical organizations.
• A faculty member requests a summer salary to allow them to complete a manuscript that is currently under revision. Completion, submission, and publication of the manuscript are identified as intended deliverables in the application for funding.
• A faculty member in the School of Theater and Dance seeks funding to bring a nationwide arts campaign examining bigotry and hate to the northern Illinois region. The project intends to generate important discussion on the topic of bigotry and hate and individuals and society’s responsibility when confronted with them. The proposal includes plans for installations and events in collaboration with multiple regional partners.
• An externally funded project cannot be completed with the externally funded resources, perhaps because additional data was received, and personnel could not be paid to analyze the additional. data.

The selection committee will be chosen from among members of the faculty actively involved in research, artistry, and scholarly activities. The selection of committee members will reflect the disciplines represented among the submissions.