University of South Florida (Tampa)
ER-18: Sustainability Research Incentives

Graduate Student Challenge Grants: Building Research Partnerships Across Disciplines. Awards are up to $5000 per research team and are made available through the USF Graduate School and the Office of Research & Innovation. These are one-year projects and are available to both master’s and doctoral students. Each proposal must be submitted by a team of four students, where at least two of the students are from two different colleges. The more departments and colleges involved the better. The proposals must be submitted in one of the signature research areas of the university, which includes sustainability of populations and/or the environment, and global research.

Part of the $1 million for the Interdisciplinary Initiative on Sustainable Communities was established for faculty seed grants in the College of Arts and Sciences.  Five seed-grants, totaling $460,000 were awarded earlier this year;Linking Work with Family Health: The Importance of the Family Dinner, Public Housing and Sustainable Communities, The Crisis of Medical Worker Brain Drain: A Comparative Case Study of Medical Labor Migration from Ecuador, Jamaica, and the Philippines, Developing Communities as Complex Adaptive Systems, and Women’s Health and Sustainable Healthy Communities: A Multidisciplinary Approach to Capability. All of the grants host faculty from multiple departments within the College of Arts and Sciences as well as faculty from other USF Colleges and/or community organizations.  In addition to fostering interdisciplinary and community collaboration, these five grants have added positions for eight new graduate students in the College of Arts and Sciences.