Graduate Incentives for Growth Awards (GIGA)

Program Description for 2012-13 start date

The Graduate College is pleased to announce the availability of funding for the fifth year of the Graduate Incentives for Growth Awards (GIGA) program. 

GIGA is, essentially, a challenge grant, to stimulate new long-term extramural funding for graduate students.  It is intended to provide direct funding support for current graduate students (international and/or domestic) and offer 'venture funds' to attract long-term extramural financial support to support additional, including, future graduate students. The overall goal of the program is to fulfill the UA mandate to increase the enrollment of graduate students or, said differently, to multiply the total number and quality of supported graduate students at the UA beyond the current base numbers and base support.

In concrete terms, GIGA provides graduate student support for one or two years, to (a) bring in more graduate students and (b) use these funds as seed grants to obtain additional graduate student funding, thereby multiplying the future effects of the award.  Graduate programs, institutes, centers and other relevant units or faculty groups are eligible to apply.

GIGA funds will be available for up to two years per award. Due to the nature of the available funds, an award can be used only for graduate student support (i.e., assistantships, fellowships, etc.). Salaries, operations or other expenses, if needed, must be provided by another source. Some proposals might request moderate support for just a few graduate students, while others might be more ambitious if there are reasonable possibilities of attracting higher levels of extramural support beyond the duration of the award. Other proposals might request fellowships, while still others might propose assistantships to achieve a number of ends including teaching, research or outreach.

Creative and innovative proposals for ways to grow graduate support and enrollment are encouraged. For example, a proposal might outline how GIGA funding will be part of an extramural funding strategy to create the desired multiplier effect. GIGA funding is not intended to provide conventional federal or state agency funding matches but to attract additional extramural sources from foundations, the private sector or individual/corporate donors, the city and county, regional organisms and other non-traditional sources. A GIGA awards might also be used to demonstrate institutional commitment and to support students in collecting data to support grant-writing and grant-submission that ultimately leads to lasting support for graduate students in the proposed program.

However, GIGA will not consider proposals that provide GA training in areas that do not serve their academic training, for simply adding GA capacity for a year or two without a concrete plan for obtaining extramural support to support these GAs, or for 'personal RAs' enabling one or two individual professors to write more research grants. GIGA also will not consider proposals to support graduate students in endeavors not related to their graduate studies such as fund-raising or writing proposals unless the program clearly demonstrates that these activities are part and parcel of a graduate student’s program of studies and appropriate career development.

The GIGA program is an annual, competitive program, with proposals evaluated by a faculty awards committee. An award pool of ~$300,000 is anticipated for the current round. Awards can be for one or for two years.  Two-year awards will be evaluated for second year renewal based on a progress report submitted by the grantee in February of Year 2 of the grant.

Eligible to Apply: Faculty or administrators within any University of Arizona graduate program, academic unit, institute, school or center. Graduate students are not eligible to apply.

 

Application:

  1. Cover and Budget Page: contact information, amount requested and budget detail using format found at above referenced application.
  2. Proposal Text: Include a brief summary of the disciplinary or thematic area and a well developed 'business plan' describing how GIGA funds will lead to a long-term net increase in graduate funding (2 pages maximum).  Please use an open format, non-technical language that faculty from outside your discipline can understand, and a font no smaller than pt. 11.
  3. Submit as electronic attachment (either as PDF or Word doc) to Cynthia Bjerk-Plocke, cbjerk@grad.arizona.edu by deadline.

Deadline: January 17, 2012, 5:00pm, for 2012-13 award start

Questions? Contact Maria Teresa Velez, Ph.D., Associate Dean, Graduate College, at mvelez@grad.arizona.edu or at (520) 621-7815