College of the Liberal Arts Start Up Funds Guidelines

Start up funds are provided by the College to newly hired faculty to help them advance their program of study through the completion of significant and substantial research projects that are likely to appear on a CV in a substantive way. Start up funds can be especially useful when they enable projects that might be infeasible in the absence of funding and/or they increase the likelihood that the faculty member can secure external funding to support the research agenda.

Approved research expenditures include (but are not limited to) travel to collections, purchase of project-specific software, hardware or data, purchase of books or other materials for the Pattee-Paterno library collection, research assistance, and book publication subventions. Start up funds are not intended to pay for course buyouts, costs related to the execution of teaching responsibilities, routine office supplies, routine computer hardware and software purchases and upgrades, routine conference travel, or expenses for research projects that do not weigh significantly in evaluations of research productivity (e.g., edited volumes). In addition, university funds cannot be used for personal memberships and/or memberships in professional organizations in conjunction with registration for professional meetings.

Start up funds are administered by the department head in consultation with the College’s Associate Dean for Research. To access start up funds, faculty should submit a brief (1-2 paragraph) proposal to their department head so that the head may provide feedback on the value of the research activity as part of the faculty member’s record of scholarship. Requests that have the support of the department head are then sent to the Research Office’s manager of planning and operations, Susan Johnson, along with the 1-2 paragraph proposal. Transfer of funds and/or processing of expenditures will be handled by Susan Johnson in conjunction with the department’s administrative assistant.

Note: Some faculty receive start up awards directly from the Dean for specific expenses that are written into their letters of offer, such as funds for lab equipment and set up. Requests for these funds should be made directly to the department head.