Call for Applications
The National Research Center on Hispanic Children & Families (the Center) is pleased to announce a new call for applications for our grant program for early career faculty at Hispanic Serving Institutions (HSIs) or Emerging Hispanic Serving Institutions (EHSIs). This grant program is aimed at supporting professional development activities that will enhance the professional growth of scholars and educators at HSIs and EHSIs. The Center will provide awards of up to $2,500 to cover expenses related to early career scholars’ professional development.
Eligibility
- Applicants must be an early career faculty (up to 7 years post PhD) at a Hispanic Serving Institution or an Emerging Hispanic Serving Institution.
- Applicants should demonstrate a strong interest in research focused on Latinx families and children and in one or more of these areas: poverty reduction and economic security and well-being, access to early care and education, and human service delivery.
Our team values equity and recognizes that systemic discrimination has negatively impacted the well-being of individuals, families, and communities who are also underrepresented in the research field. We strongly encourage scholars from populations that are historically underrepresented in research and academic fields (e.g., Latinx/o/e, first-generation graduate students, first-generation immigrants) to apply.
Application Requirements
Applications are due Wednesday, October 20, 2023, at 5 p.m. PST, with the following components:
- A Letter of Interest on letterhead from the respective HSI/emerging HSI that describes (in no more than 500 words):
- How the applicant’s research agenda and work support Latinx families and children
- The applicant’s interest and experience in research focused on one or more of these areas: poverty reduction and economic security and well-being, access to early care and education, and human service delivery
- The amount of funds requested, including the specific professional development activities that the grant will support, and how they will help advance the applicant’s research career. Applicants should include the cost of each activity that would be supported by the grant (can be submitted in table format). Examples of professional development activities that will be covered include but are not limited to:
- Workshops, trainings, or courses;
- Conference-related expenses (e.g., registration, travel, lodging, poster printing);
- Research-related hardware or software (e.g., analysis packages, recorders, laptops/tablets for data collection);
- Fees to access data sets;
- Publication expenses (e.g., open access articles);
- Stipends for participants;
- Books;
- Professional association membership dues; and
- Journal subscriptions.
Applicants requesting that funds go through their institution should include overhead expenses in the amount requested (see Frequently Asked Questions). Funds cannot be used to cover beverages or meals.
- The extent to which their institution provides funds (if at all) for professional development and research activities, and how the professional development grant would supplement those funds or fill a gap
- Statement of diverse experiences with relevant background, lived-experiences, coursework, and skills that will inform the applicant’s ability to center equity and cultural responsiveness in their work, and/or interest in this area. This statement is limited to 100 words and should be submitted in this form in the indicated question.
- Curriculum vitae (CV) or resume with information about the applicant’s educational background, publications, presentations, and any other relevant professional or personal experience.
- Proof of degree conferral such as an unofficial transcript or a copy of the applicant’s diploma to show proof of doctoral degree completion.
Submission guidelines
Applicants should submit their application materials using this form by October 20, 2023, 5 p.m. PST. Applicants will be notified of award decisions on November 17, 2023.
Evaluation criteria
Applications will be evaluated according to the following criteria:
- Inclusion of all application components and demonstration of eligibility
- Degree to which the applicant’s research experience or interests are centered around Hispanic families and children
- Degree to which applicant’s diverse experiences inform their ability to center equity and cultural responsiveness in their work
- Degree to which applicant’s research applies innovative frameworks, methods, or approaches to advance research focused on Latino populations
- Alignment of applicant’s research experience or interests with one or more of these areas: poverty reduction and economic security and well-being, access to early care and education, and human service delivery
- Extent to which professional development funds will help advance the applicant’s career
- Need for funds to support the applicant’s professional development
Please note that the Center reserves the right to award grants for a lesser amount than requested if certain activities are not deemed to be aligned with the goals of the grant. Awards are conditional on the availability of funds.
Applicants are encouraged to review our Frequently Asked Questions before submission. Please send additional questions to [email protected].
Visit our website to sign up for our Jobs, Funding, and Opportunities Alert and follow us on Twitter to learn about opportunities from the Hispanic Center and the larger field.
Frequently Asked Questions
- How many grants do you expect to award? We anticipate awarding up to $10,000 in awards across grantees. The number of awards will depend on the amount awarded per grant and is conditional on the availability of funds.
- Will stipends go directly to the applicant or the institution Stipends can be paid directly to applicants or their institution. Please note that we will issue a 1099 for stipends paid directly to applicants. Awardees are responsible for reporting this stipend as income in their taxes. Applicants who prefer to receive funds through their institution should include overhead expenses in the amount requested. The total amount requested, including overhead, should not exceed $2,500.
- What are my responsibilities as a grantee? Grantees are expected to use funds for the activities requested.
- Are there exceptions to the early career status definition (up to 7 years post PhD)? The Center recognizes that there may be circumstances that lead to lapses in investigators’ careers (e.g., childbirth, medical leave, natural disasters). Applicants have an opportunity to request an extension of early career status eligibility and provide a justification for their request in the online application for the review committee’s consideration.
- Where can I find information about workshops and trainings available to support my professional development Several organizations regularly organize meetings, workshops, and/or trainings aimed at developing methodological skills. The list below offers some examples, although this list is not exhaustive:
American Evaluation Association
Coursera
Inter-university Consortium for Political and Social Research
National Council on Family Relations
Office of Planning, Research & Evaluation
The Evaluators’ Institute
Faculty Success Program
The ICPSR Summer Program: Your home for learning statistics and quantitative method
Applicants are encouraged to sign up for the Center’s Jobs, Funding, and Opportunities Alert to learn about additional opportunities. - Who do I reach out to for questions about allowable expenses? Please reach out to [email protected] to ask questions about allowable expenses.
- Do I need to request the full amount ($2,500)? No. This is the maximum amount that will be granted per award.
Read below to learn about our Spring 2023 grant awardees and how they will use their awards to grow professionally.
Spring 2023 Professional Development Grant Awardees
Kristina Lovato, MSW, Ph.D., is an Assistant Professor of Social Welfare at the University of California, Berkeley. Dr. Lovato’s scholarly work focuses on enhancing Latinx child and family well-being among immigrant families at risk of immigration enforcement and/or public child welfare involvement. She will be using the funding to attend the Interdisciplinary Qualitative Research Methods Institute (IQRMI) at the University of Maryland.
Mayra Puente, Ph.D., is an Assistant Professor of higher education at the University of California, Santa Barbara. Dr. Puente is particularly concerned with college access, choice, transition, retention, and success issues for rural Latinx students and other institutionally marginalized student groups and communities. Dr. Puente draws on frameworks like Critical Race Theory, Latino Critical Race Theory, Critical Race Spatial Analysis, and Chicana Feminisms to address these pressing educational issues and enact social justice. She recently co-developed a Platicando y Mapeando methodology in educational research, which combines her multiple interests and expertise in critical raced gendered epistemologies, Chicana feminist methodologies, and geographic information systems (GIS). Her passion for higher education access and equity is driven by the educational barriers she faced as a first-generation college student from a Mexican immigrant farm working background and by her professional experiences as a higher education advocate in California’s San Joaquin Valley for rural Latinx students and families. She will be using the funds to attend the Esri User Conference, the worlds largest GIS conference.
Marisa Westbrook, MPH, Ph.D., is an Assistant Professor in Health Promotion at the OHSU-PSU School of Public Health at Portland State University. Dr. Westbrook is a community-engaged researcher studying the impacts of the affordable housing crisis and urban inequity on mental health and wellbeing among low-income communities of color. Her ethnographic research projects examine the embodied experiences of housing insecurity and displacement pressure among Hispanic/Latinx immigrant families in changing neighborhoods. She will be using the funds to support her training and needed research hardware, she will be attending the Research Talk Qualitative Data Analysis Camp at UNC’s Odum Institute for Research in Social Science and will purchase materials for her fieldwork.
Past Professional Development Grant Awardees
Learn about our 2022 grant awardees and how they used their awards to grow professionally.
Gerilyn Slicker, Ph.D., is an Assistant Professor of Early Childhood Education at the University of Nevada, Las Vegas. Dr. Slicker’s research interests are in early childhood policy, with a specific focus on investigating and evaluating the influence of federal, state, and local policies on children’s equitable access to early care and education. She used the funding to attend NCFR’s “How to be an Anti-Racist Researcher” webinar, an interactive mixed methods and qualitative research workshop offered at the University of Michigan, and to purchase software licenses for her qualitative work.
Carolina Valdivia, Ph.D., is an Assistant Professor in the Department of Criminology, Law, and Society at the University of California, Irvine. Dr. Valdivia’s work explores how various forms of legal and social exclusion impact the lives of immigrant youth and their families, including their educational trajectories, mental health, and political participation. She used the funding to attend and participate in annual conferences of the American Sociological Association and the Society for the Study of Social Problems.
Irene Vega, Ph.D., is an Assistant Professor of Sociology at the University of California, Irvine. Dr. Vega’s broad areas of expertise are in Latinx sociology, educational inequality, international migration, and sociology of law. Her current book project examines the moral and racial logics that undergrid the U.S. immigration bureaucracy. She used the funding to attend the American Sociological Association’s annual conference.
Cynthia A. Wiltshire, Ph.D., is an Assistant Professor of Early Childhood Education at the University of Texas at El Paso. Dr. Wiltshire’s work examines the relationships that exist between teachers and Hispanic children in early childhood education settings, specifically the associations between teacher stress, teacher warmth, and child outcomes in cognitive and socioemotional development. She used the funding to attend the 2023 American Educational Research Association conference and to purchase a new laptop that will be used for data collection activities related to her research.