Call for Proposals

The Arts, Science + Culture Initiative supports the Graduate Collaboration Grants to encourage independent trans-disciplinary research between students in the arts and the sciences. Graduate students from areas such as Art History, English, Music, Cinema and Media Studies, Theater and Performance, or Visual Arts are encouraged to pair up with graduate students from Astronomy and Astrophysics, Biological Sciences, Chemistry, Computer Science, Geophysical Sciences, Math, Physics, Psychology, Anthropology, Statistics, or Social Science areas for joint research projects.

Each group may consist of two or three graduate students, with at least one in the arts/humanities and one from the sciences, who work together over the course of five months to investigate a subject from the perspectives offered by each of their disciplines. Projects will be conducted from December 2022 through May 2023, with a public presentation scheduled at the end of the academic year. The projects may take the form of a publishable paper, photographic documentation, film, music score, performance, theater piece, exhibition, documented research experiment, or another agreed-upon format. Proposals will be reviewed and selected in November.

Each applicant of each group must have an endorsement by a faculty member. UChicago students must be supported by a UChicago full-time faculty member and SAIC students must be supported by a SAIC full-time faculty member. These faculty members will serve as advisers to the grantees over the course of the grant period.

The objective is to identify and encourage innovative interactions between students of the sciences and the arts. The review process will be competitive and the proposals will be evaluated on the basis of a number of criteria, including trans-disciplinary innovation and scholarly risk-taking. Successful proposals may request up to $3,000 to cover costs for materials, use of media labs, computation facilities, and in some cases machine-shop time, as well as costs associated with the design, implementation, literary documentation, publication, and/or presentation of the project.

This fund is supported by the University of Chicago, Office of the Provost, the Pritzker School of Molecular Engineering, and the School of the Art Institute of Chicago, and is managed by the Arts, Science + Culture Initiative. The Initiative and faculty members establish the criteria for submissions, set the timeline, publicize the program, and select recipients.

• Collaborative team members must be graduate students and in residence during the academic year in which the project is to be funded.

• Each team must have at least one member from the arts and one from a science discipline.

• Each team member must have the endorsement of a faculty member who will be aware of the project and be available to advise the team during the grant period. We ask each faculty member to attend a critique session and the final presentation.

• Each team must agree to a public presentation of his/her project on May 17, 2023.

Grant recipients are required to participate in the following:

• Monthly conversations with their cohort, during which they will gain and provide constructive feedback and engage with and learn about their peers' projects. In-person meetings will include dinner.

• A critique to be scheduled in March and attended by their advisors, other faculty, and academic peers.

• A film session to be scheduled in April to create a short video about their collaboration.

• The Final Presentations event at the Logan Center at which each team will deliver a presentation about their project.

Final Presentations will take place on the evening of Wednesday, May 17, 2023, at the Logan Center.

Proposal Deadline:
Monday, October 31, 2022, 11:59pm Late applications will not be considered.

Notification of Funding:
No later than Friday, November 4, 2022.

Evaluation Criteria

• Extent of trans-disciplinary innovation.

• Degree of scholarly risk-taking.

• Integration of concept explored and forms in which it is executed.

• Feasibility for completion within the grant period (approx. 5 months).

• Relevance to each individual team member’s discipline.

Guidelines
This grant does not fund food or drink or receptions, computer, or other technical equipment that can be borrowed or rented from the student’s institution, University of Chicago faculty and student honoraria, production of CDs, conferences and symposia, or (with some exceptions) travel for research.

Incomplete applications will not be considered for funding.

If awarded an Arts, Science + Culture Graduate Collaboration Grant, each team will be required to agree to allow The University of Chicago to include the final work in publications, websites, or other media forms.

Sample Proposal: net(work)

Sample Proposal Budget: net(work)