Grants for Untenured Faculty

C.E.L.S.S. awards seed grants to untenured faculty members for experimental projects. Applications are accepted both for studies conducted in the lab and for studies conducted online.

Application Requirements

Applications are due February 21st, 2024. Applications will be evaluated competitively by a committee of referees.

The application must include the following, separate documents:

  1. The proposal
  2. An appendix with experimental materials
  3. The budget (i.e., a summary table with a clear description of how the grant funds would be spent on participant payments, fees, etc.)
  4. The applicant’s CV

The proposal should directly address the following items:

  1. What question(s) does your project study?
  2. What is the motivation for and contribution of your project?
  3. What is the relevance of an experiment to your project? How will an experiment answer the question(s) your project studies?
  4. Describe the procedures for your experiment, including the intended number of subjects, sessions, and payment structure.

Altogether, your proposal should consist of no more than 2,000 words, excluding references. Longer proposals will not be considered.

The appendix should contain materials that demonstrate what the experiment will look like. Examples of such materials include experimental instructions, questions, or screenshots. 

The maximum budget is $4,000.

The applicant should send the documents, in a single compressed folder, to the CELSS manager at [email protected]. The subject of the e-mail should be "Application for CELSS Funding: Faculty" and the name of the compressed folder should be "LastnameFirstname_CelssFundingApp".

Notes:

  1. The explicit involvement of one or more graduate students, identified by name, will be considered an asset to the proposal.
  2. Unless part of a class, any experiment run on CELSS' subject pool or with financial support from CELSS requires approval by the Institutional Review Board (http://www.columbia.edu/cu/irb/) and the respect of CELSS rules (https://celss.iserp.columbia.edu/research-projects/rules).
  3. The funding allocation expires at the end of the second semester following the grant. Unused funds will be reappropriated by CELSS.
  4. CELSS requires that all experiments pay participants an average of $15/hour and a minimum of $1. 
  5. CELSS generally does not fund field experiments. Please contact the CELSS manager at [email protected] if you're unsure whether your experiment falls under this category.

Eligibility

Applicants must be untenured faculty at Barnard Economics or at Columbia in Economics, Political Science, SIPA, the Business School, Sociology, or a department affiliated with ISERP.

Requests for clarification

Questions concerning this call for proposal and the use of the lab can be addressed to the CELSS manager,
at [email protected] , or to the CELSS director at [email protected].