Skip to main content

Accessibility menu

Skip to main content Skip to footer

Award Types

A page within River Studies Center

RSC Logo

Ron and Jane Rada River Studies Center Margins of Excellence Grant Program

Overview ||  Award Types  ||  Guidelines  ||  Timeline/Process  ||  Application  ||  Examples  ||  Program Objective 5-year Benchmarks

 

                          Award Types

Confluence Award Projects – A confluence is where two different segments of a river merge to form a new, larger segment of river. 

These should aspire to build:

·      new external partnerships;

·      major extramural research funding initiatives;

·      multi-disciplinary, multi-departmental, or multi-institutional curricular design projects (e.g., Freshwater Collaborative of Wisconsin [FCW] Track 3 proposals). 

These projects:

·       should be highly collaborative strategic initiatives that build new or enhance existing working relationships among the RSC membership. 

·       are meant to be ambitious, but feasible, and should be designed to potentially yield substantive instructional or research returns for members and their students.

Up to $5,000 can be awarded for each “Confluence Award.”

 

 

Tributary Award Projects – A tributary is a smaller, contributing channel to the mainstem of a river. 

These projects should be designed to be smaller in scope than those supported by a Confluence Award but still serve as a strategic initiative. 

These projects could support:

·       rapidly developing opportunities that have some urgency about availability of, or access to data, facilities, or specialized equipment. 

·       specialized analytical or computational training for RSC members and, provided the training is brought back to share with the lab, their students. 

This grant can not be used to support sending students to meetings to present their research.

A goal of these awards is to maximize information transfer among the membership that increases its technical and/or scholarly capacity.

Up to $1,750 can be awarded for each “Tributary Award.” 

Funding priority will be given to projects that…

·       Specifically address outcomes highlighted in the Objective Benchmarks for this Margins of Excellence Grant Program

·       Are strategic initiatives that increase the capacity to conduct research and other scholarly activities that align with the RSC Mission

·       Create sustainable partnerships between the RSC, natural resource agencies, industry, and non-governmental organizations that provide experiential learning opportunities for UWL students

·       Advance water-focused, multi-disciplinary instruction and pedagogy in either a formal or informal setting

·       Enhances the general public’s understanding and appreciation of the important contributions UWL’s RSC makes to environmental protection and education of Wisconsin’s citizenry (the Wisconsin Idea)

·       Address the goals of Inclusive Excellence (i.e., Actions that increase access, equity and inclusion for historically marginalized and systematically under-served populations)

·       Provide compelling reasons for donors (alumni, friends, and others) to invest in RSC experiential learning endeavors

·       Leverage opportunities for matching donations for initiatives referenced above

Additional considerations:

·       Proposals should be well-written and demonstrate attention to detail

·       Proposals that are deemed to not have enough impact and/or that require ongoing funding to be successful may not be funded even if the overall proposal is of quality