The William T. Grant Scholars Program supports career development for promising early-career researchers. The program funds five-year research and mentoring plans that significantly expand junior researchers’ expertise in new disciplines, methods, and content areas.
Applicants should have a track record of conducting high-quality research and an interest in pursuing a significant shift in their trajectories as researchers. The Foundation recognizes that early-career researchers are rarely given incentives or support to take measured risks in their work, so this award includes a mentoring component,as well as a supportive academic community.
Awards are based on applicants’ potential to become influential researchers, as well as their plans to expand their expertise in new and significant ways. The application should make a cohesive argument for how the applicant will expand his or her expertise. The research plan should evolve in conjunction with the development of new expertise, and the mentoring plan should describe how the proposed mentors will support applicants in acquiring that expertise. Proposed research plans must address questions that are relevant to policy and practice in the Foundation’s focus areas.
Please review the full application guidelines carefully using the link to the right before applying.
Focus Areas
The Foundation supports research in two distinct focus areas: 1) Reducing inequality in youth outcomes, and 2) Improving the use of research evidence in decisions that affect young people. Proposed research must address questions that align with one of these areas.
Reducing Inequality Focus Area
In this focus area, we fund research studies that aim to build, test, or increase understanding of programs, policies, or practices to reduce inequality in the academic, social, behavioral, or economic outcomes of young people ages 5-25 in the United States, along dimensions of race, ethnicity, economic standing, language minority status, or immigrant origins.
Proposals for research on reducing inequality must:
1. Identify a specific inequality in youth outcomes. We are especially interested in research to reduce inequality in academic, social, behavioral, or economic outcomes.
- Show that outcomes are unequal in a brief discussion of existing literature.
- Highlight the main explanations for the unequal outcomes that are relevant for your study.
2. Make a convincing case for the dimension(s) of inequality the study will address. The Scholars Program is especially interested in research to reduce inequality along the dimensions of race, ethnicity, economic standing, language minority status, or immigrant origin status.
- Be very specific in naming the groups on which the study will focus. Avoid vague terms such as “at-risk youth” or “vulnerable youth.”
- Offer a well-developed conceptualization of inequality. Avoid treating dimensions of inequality (e.g., race, economic standing) as variables without providing conceptual and/or theoretical insight into why and how the identified inequality exists.
- If proposing research that focuses on a dimension other than race, ethnicity, economic standing, language minority status, or immigrant origins, make a compelling case for this focus. Please note that in addition to the dimensions listed above, we encourage research on reducing inequality for LGBTQ youth, particularly in intersection with at least one of the prioritized dimensions.
3. Articulate how findings from your research will help build, test, or increase understanding of a program, policy, or practice to reduce the specific inequality that you have identified.
- Draw on extant theoretical and empirical literature to provide a rationale for why the specific programs, policies, or practices under study will equalize outcomes between groups or improve outcomes of a particular group. In other words, specify your theory of change.
- Identify how the study will investigate this rationale to determine whether it holds up to empirical scrutiny.
Improving Research Evidence Focus Area
In this focus area, we fund research studies that advance theory and build empirical knowledge on ways to improve the use of research evidence by policymakers, agency leaders, organizational managers, intermediaries, and other decision-makers that shape youth-serving systems in the United States.
While an extensive body of knowledge provides a rich understanding of specific conditions that foster the use of research evidence, we lack robust, validated strategies for cultivating them. What is required to create structural and social conditions that support research use? What infrastructure is needed, and what will it look like? What supports and incentives foster research use? And, ultimately, how do youth outcomes fare when research evidence is used? This is where new research can make a difference.
In this focus area, The foundation welcomes studies that pursue one of three aims:
- Building, identifying, or testing ways to improve the use of existing research evidence
- Building, identifying, or testing ways to facilitate the production of new research evidence that responds to decision-makers’ needs
- Testing whether strategies that improve the use of research evidence in turn improve decision-making and youth outcomes
Eligible Applicants
- Applicants must be nominated by their institutions. Major divisions of an institution (e.g., College of Arts and Sciences, Medical School) may nominate only one applicant each year. In addition to the eligibility criteria below, deans and directors of those divisions should refer to the Selection Criteria to aid them in choosing their nominees. Applicants of any discipline are eligible.
- Applicants must have received their terminal degree within seven years of submitting their application. We calculate this by adding seven years to the date the doctoral degree was conferred. In medicine, the seven-year maximum is dated from the completion of the first residency.
- Applicants must be employed in career-ladder positions. For many applicants, this means holding a tenure-track position in a university. The award may not be used as a post-doctoral fellowship.
- Applicants outside the United States are eligible. As with U.S. applicants, they must pursue research that has compelling policy or practice implications for youth in the United States.
Please upload one PDF file (File name: [Last name]_GrantScholars_2024) containing the following items in order no later than 4:00 p.m. on the internal submission deadline:
1). Cover Page
- Descriptive title of the proposed activity
- PI name, departmental affiliation(s) and contact information
- Proposed mentors names, titles and departmental affiliation(s)
2). A 5-year research plan (2 pages max) which should include:
- the unique contribution of the research,
- its significance in terms of policy and/or practice,
- research design and methodology,
- data sources and collection procedures.
3). A mentoring plan (1 page max):
- applicant’s current areas of expertise and the new ones that will be added during the award;
- the rationale for the proposed mentor(s);
- the mentoring activities designed to develop the new expertise;
- how the award will add significant value to the proposed mentoring relationship.
4). Brief CV (2 pages max).
Formatting Guidelines:
Font/size: Times New Roman (12 pt.)
Document margins: 1.0” (top, bottom, left and right)
Standard paper size (8 ½” x 11)
he Office of Foundation Relations is the designated institutional contact with the Foundation and is available to consult on proposal narrative elements and answer other foundation-related questions. University Park and Commonwealth Campus applicants should please contact Jara Dorsey-Lash, Associate Director, Foundation Relations (jed72@psu.edu) for additional support. Penn State College of Medicine applicants should please contact Maria Petrilak, Foundation Relations Officer (mpetrilak@pennstatehealth.psu.edu) for additional support.