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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
Overview
NOTE: This program is coming to an end in 2024. The final deadlines for proposal submission are: November 25th for Confluence proposals and December 2nd for Tributary proposals.
The Ron and Jane Rada River Studies Center Margins of Excellence Grant Program was created to increase the scholarly capacity of UWL’s River Studies Center. This program will help the RSC enhance its margin of excellence by not only (1) building upon the base of aquatic science/scholarly knowledge and education of science professionals but also (2) extending further its influence beyond the halls of academia, ultimately informing, educating, and inspiring individuals of all ages in the local community and beyond.
This 5-year grant program should be viewed by the RSC membership, University, and Foundation as only a first step in bringing philanthropic and other extramural resources to the RSC. Through this grant program the RSC will continue to cultivate a culture of passion and vision for making a difference, professionally and societally. The donors, Ron and Jane Rada, encourage the RSC to take time to reflect upon where it has been (including all those faculty/staff, students, and collaborators who were a part of building its tradition), to celebrate the present, and to look forward to the future with even greater aspirations.
The grant program will annually provide extraordinary support (i.e., support for faculty through extra-ordinary payment (EOP) mechanisms). Those areas are (A) curricular and/or experiential learning and (B) research/scholarship. The general scope of all grant proposals must align with the Mission of the UWL River Studies Center - to facilitate and support scholarly endeavors and outreach pertinent to the Upper Mississippi River, its connected ecosystems, and other inland water bodies. The RSC will use this grant program to meet several objective benchmarks.
There are two types of grants possible. The number of awards depend upon the size of the award requests for both the larger “Confluence” and smaller “Tributary” awards. A minimum of two “Confluence” and two “Tributary” projects will be funded annually. If necessary, fringe benefit costs associated with awards used for member development will be covered by the
Previous Awards
- Confluence Awards:
- Adam Driscoll, 2023, Assessing behaviors of trout anglers related to aquatic invasive species in the Upper Mississippi River basin
- Ross Vander Vorste and David Schumann, 2020, River Studies Center Aquatics Laboratory: experiential learning in aquatic science at UWL
- Tributary Awards:
- Colin Belby, 2023, Mapping sedimentation near Rosebud Island in Lake Onalaska following dredge cuts for habitat rehabilitation in 1989
- Joan Bunbury, 2024,The effects of climate change on the occupation of a Mississippian settlement in southeastern Wisconsin 1000-1250 CE