GSA Graduate Student Research Grant Application

GUIDELINES & INSTRUCTIONS

ELIGIBILITY

To apply for this grant, you must:

                ·If you need assistance joining GSA, renewing a membership, changing your membership type (such as from “Early Career Professional” to “Student”), or
updating the information in your GSA member profile (such as the type of student you are, or your address/country), please contact GSA Sales & Service (+1 303-357-1000, +1-888-443-4472 [toll free], gsaservice@geosociety.org) between 8:00 a.m. – 5:00 p.m. Mountain Time.

                ·Applicants do not need to be a U.S. Citizen nor a U.S. Resident Alien.

                ·Applicants who are a U.S. Citizen or U.S. Resident Alien are required to provide a Social Security Number (SSN) with their application; other applicants are not required to provide an SSN.

                ·Citizenship status is not taken into account when evaluating applications.


ETHICS AND PROFESSIONAL CONDUCT

                · Fabrication - "making up data or results and recording or reporting them."

                · Falsification - "manipulating research materials, equipment, or processes, or changing or omitting data or results such that the research is not accurately represented in the research record."

                                        · Plagiarism - "appropriating another person's ideas, processes, results, or words without giving appropriate credit." GSA interprets this definition broadly to forbid plagiarism in verbal or written communications.

                · Not providing a grant

                · Informing the student’s advisor that plagiarism has been committed

                · Not allowing the student to apply for another GSA grant or program

                · Termination of GSA Membership

                · Other consequences, as determined by the GSA Council.

                         

           · Purdue Online Writing Lab (OWL): Avoiding Plagiarism

           · The Writing Center at the University of Wisconsin - Madison: Quoting and Paraphrasing

           · Duke University: Plagiarism Tutorial

           · Harvard University: Harvard Guide to Using Sources (includes a section about Plagiarism)

                   · Chronicle of Higher Education: Plagiarism in Grant Proposals, by Karen M. Markin, 12/10/12

                         

GENERAL INFORMATION

COMPUTER AND BROWSER REQUIREMENTS

BUTTONS

Save for Later
All entered data is saved to the database and can be accessed later for edits; to save for later the only required field is your email address. When using this button you may access your application repeatedly.

Submit Completed Application
Application is submitted to GSA and flagged as final. All required fields on the application (marked with red asterisks) must be completed for final submission. Applications will not be considered for review until the "Submit Completed Application" button is used. Your advisor's appraisal does not have to be submitted in order for you to submit your final application. Once submitted, you should receive an email confirmation. Contact GSA if you do not receive confirmation. You may continue to edit the application after using this button.  After making any edits you must push the “Submit Completed Application” again in order to flag your application as final.

Withdraw Application
If you have started an application and do not want to submit it, please withdraw your application. Once the application has been withdrawn you may not apply again for this year.

BUDGET

The budget must comply with the Guidelines for the Use of Funds, which can also be found in the Policies and Procedures document. Some types of costs are allowed, such as a rental vehicle for necessary field work. Some types of costs are not allowed, such as the salaries for you and your advisor. Please be sure to review the full list of allowable and non-allowable costs before completing the budget section.

In the Budget Table of the proposal, list each individual item in your budget in decreasing order of priority. The first item listed should be the most important. Be as specific as possible. Provide each item’s total cost (“Total Amount Budgeted”), the portion of that cost you are requesting from GSA with this proposal (“Amount Requested from GSA”), and the portion of that cost you have requested from other sources (“Amount Requested from Other Sources”). Be sure to total up each row and column of budgeted item costs–the online application does not do the math for you.  For each line item (row) in the budget, the “Total Amount Budgeted” must equal the sum of the “Amount Requested from GSA” and the “Amount Requested from Other Sources”. The total amount requested from GSA must not exceed $2,500.

In the Budget Justification section of the proposal, explain the need for each item in your budget for which you are requesting funding from GSA. Also, be sure to provide a specific cost breakdown for each item. For example, if you are including the cost of food needed in the field, specify the number of days food would be needed and the daily cost of the food (“10 days at $12/day, for a total of $120”). Another example might be the cost of lab samples—please specify an estimated number of samples and the cost per sample.  Similarly, if there are transportation costs, specify the number of trips and the cost per trip, or the number of miles driven and the cost per mile. If expenses or charges to you, the student, are fixed and not negotiable, these fixed rates should be explained in the Budget Justification section.

PROGRESS REPORT FORMS

If you have received a graduate student grant from GSA previously, you will need to indicate the year received and provide a progress report. Even if you have already emailed your report to GSA for your past award, you must resubmit the progress report form with this application. Copy and paste the text from the report form into the appropriate field in the online application. If you do not have the report, please write up a summary of your research and how the money was spent. You do not need to submit the original progress report form that was emailed to GSA.

GRAPHICS FILES

One graphic with a caption is required. Applications without a graphic will not be reviewed. Upload a pertinent, well-organized figure that enhances the proposal. This figure should illustrate the location, data results, or any other information pertinent to your proposed research. Please be sure to discuss the figure in your proposal text. Successful figures will include at least: title, stand-alone caption, and a citation if not the original work of the student. The figure must be in PDF format; no other file formats will be accepted.  The filename must contain a valid pdf extension, such as: "figure.pdf”. The file must be no larger than 5 MB in size. It should be one page, one-sided, and sized no larger than 8.5 inches by 11 inches. Landscape and portrait orientations are both acceptable. To upload the figure, please use the link provided in the application form. Once you already have a figure on file, if you upload a new figure, it will overwrite the old one. Please be sure to view your figure in the “View Your Application” page. It is advised that you view your figure in multiple browsers to ensure that it displays as desired.

REFERENCES

Use the REFERENCES section at the end of the application form to properly cite the work of others upon which your research is built. Keep in mind that the reviewers may have published on your topic. If you’d like to connect the references back to the text in your proposal, you can number the references and insert those numbers where appropriate in your text. Remember that superscripts and subscripts generally do not work in our system, so you may want to put the reference numbers in parentheses or brackets. For details on the format for your references, please refer to the Reference Guide that GSA has developed for authors submitting text for publication by GSA.

ADVISOR APPRAISAL FORM