Call for Applications! Student Fund for Critical Community Engaged Scholarship

Purpose of Student Fund

The Community Engaged Scholarship Institute (CESI) is pleased to announce the 2024/25 call for applications for our Student Fund for Critical Community Engaged Scholarship.

Critical community engaged scholarship (CCES) is understood as mutually beneficial partnerships among researchers and community who address community-identified priorities through co-learning, valuing and applying various types of knowledge and expertise, sharing of resources, and generating publicly accessible outputs.

CESI recognizes the value of engaged research for co-creating and applying critical knowledge and creating impacts. Our student fund aims to address gaps in student funding for engaged research as this work often comes with costs additional to those incurred as part of traditional academic research projects.

Eligibility

Through our Student CCES Fund, we aim to support engaged research, knowledge mobilization, and other community engaged scholarly activities that that are being conducted outside of regular assigned course work (e.g. engaged independent studies, theses, dissertations, etc.).

Students are eligible for up to $500.00 of funding per academic year. Funding is awarded on a competitive basis and applications will be evaluated based on the following criteria:  

• Clear grounding and connection among research purpose and community-identified priorities, and/or community-driven research questions.
• Clear effort to build mutually-beneficial relationships which value community knowledge and engage at multiple levels and/or points in the research process (i.e. collaboration in planning and/or carrying out of the research, integrated knowledge mobilization).
• Research methods and knowledge mobilization activities chosen are appropriate, effective, and relevant to research questions and community context.
• Clear attention throughout the research process to ensuring findings and outputs are accessible, relevant, useable, and co-created in collaboration with community.

This fund is primarily intended to support students who are housed in the College of Social and Applied Human Sciences (CSAHS), however students from other Colleges are welcome to apply and, if eligible, will be assessed on a case-by-case basis using the same criteria above, and funded when possible.

Application Deadlines and Processes

Applications for the Student CCES Fund will be accepted in the Fall and Winter semesters. The deadline for Winter 2025 is Friday, February 28^th at 11:59pm. The deadline for Fall 2025 is Monday, October 20^th at 11:59pm.

Students previously awarded funding via the CESI Student CES Fund are encouraged to explore other resources, including those listed on the CESI website. Applications from students previously awarded funds will be considered on a case-by-case basis similar to applications submitted from students outside of CSAHS.

Please note that CESI often receives a larger volume of applications than we are able to fund at any given time. We highly encourage students to provide all of the requested details about their research so we may assess your application with the fullest overview possible. We strongly suggest that students apply for this fund in the semester where they have established more complete details of the community engaged project in which they will be involved. Students may also apply for funding retroactively to support engaged research activities which occurred within the same academic year provided they are able to submit receipts for expenses incurred.

The application form can be completed by the student researcher alone or in consultation with the faculty member supervising their work. It must be signed by both parties. You can also view this Call for Applications and the Application Form as attachments below. 

For students interested in doing critical community engaged scholarship, we encourage you to consult with CESI staff early in the partnership development and research planning processes to ensure alignment with CCES principles and practices, and a strong application for funding.

Questions?

For questions related to the Student CCES Fund and/or about working with CESI staff in your engaged research, please get in touch with: