The CLASS Dean’s Travel Fund

Purpose of the Award

The CLASS Dean’s Travel Fund is designed to provide the college's tenured and tenure-track faculty members with opportunities that enhance their research and scholarship while increasing the visibility of CLASS by supporting travel to present their research findings or creative activity at professional meetings with a national or international audience.

Award Description

• The CLASS Dean’s Travel Fund is competitive, and resources are limited.
• A faculty member may not receive the Provost’s Travel Fund Award AND the CLASS Dean’s Travel award for the same presentation.
• All funding will be awarded on a competitive basis; the total number and ($) amount of awards provided in any award cycle will depend on the total number and competitiveness of the applications received.
• The maximum ($) amount that can be requested for any individual award is $1000.00,
• Since total annual funding for the Dean’s Travel Award is fixed, priority will be given to applications from faculty members who did not receive a travel award the preceding academic year.
• Eligible travel expenses include registration fees, airfare, ground transportation, lodging, and meals. Only the most economical fares are eligible for reimbursement under this program.
• The fund is not intended to replace support for faculty travel from existing sources (e.g., contracts and grants, and current policies or practices for travel support within colleges or departments).
• An award may be allocated only if the faculty member is presenting his or her research or creative work at a qualifying venue; the presentation will usually entail a competitive application process, but, unlike the Provost’s Travel Fund Award, the committee may also consider invited lectures. Preference will be given to presentations likely to lead to article or book publications in TARU and AAU recognized venues, in line with university priorities.
• Qualifying venues include regular or annual meetings of a national (US or another country's national society) or international professional society; or quadrennial (or otherwise periodically occurring) international congresses that are sponsored by a number of national professional societies. Professional societies are usually defined as those that collect dues, have elected officers, and may have published journals or other outlets for scholarly work. Qualifying venues may also include meetings sponsored by a government agency or industrial society if the meetings are of an academic nature and take place annually or biennially; and juried competitions of a national or international scope that are held regularly. Institutions of higher education may also be considered qualifying venues in the case of invited lectures.
• Funds are unlikely to be allocated to attend special meetings, Festschrifts, meetings of special interest groups, etc, though some invited lectures may qualify.
• Only full-time tenured and tenure-track faculty members are eligible to receive funding from this program. Retired faculty members and those on Voluntary Modification of Employment (VMOE) are not eligible.
• For collaborative research presentation(s), which involves multiple faculty members, only the primary presenting faculty member may be supported.
• If travel has already occurred at the time of application, then faculty members are not eligible to apply for this fund.
• A Faculty member may receive at most one travel award from this program per fiscal year.

Application Process

• Eligibility: Associate/Full Professors preferred
• Applicants must download the application, complete it electronically, print a hard copy, and obtain the appropriate signatures from their department chair.
• Signed application forms and a current cv must be submitted prior to the application deadline as a single PDF to sconnolly@uh.edu. Only electronically submitted and complete applications will be reviewed.
• There are three deadlines per year (one each for fall, spring, and summer semester travel) that fall a week after the deadline for the Provost’s Travel Award to ensure that funds will be available to faculty in those disciplines whose conferences are later in the academic calendar. CLASS faculty may submit applications for funding of travel that has already occurred or will occur as long as the deadline is met.
• For the 2023-2024 fiscal year of the program, application deadlines will be as follows: October 2, 2023, for travel that starts between September 1, 2023, and February 29, 2024. February 5, 2024, for travel that starts between March 1, 2024, and May 31, 2024. May 6, 2024, for travel that starts between June 1, 2024 and August 31, 2024.
• If you have not received an acceptance confirmation from the venue by the submittal deadline, please submit the application with a note indicating so and send the letter of acceptance as soon as it is received.
• A faculty committee appointed by the CLASS Dean will review requests for support to ensure that all applications conform to the published requirements and make recommendations to the Dean.
• The faculty committee will begin its review of applications soon after the Provost Travel Awards are announced (Note that the committee will not review the papers or posters themselves.
• Upon approval, funds will be provided to the faculty member’s department business advisor (DBA). It is the department’s responsibility to process the paperwork associated with the reimbursement.  Faculty recipients must follow the normal travel approval procedures in advance of the travel. 
• Once an application has been approved, no substitutions will be allowed; if an individual wishes to use the program’s funds to support a presentation other than the one for which the original application was submitted, he or she must submit an entirely new application prior to the application deadline.