EXCEL

The College of Liberal Arts announces the EXCEL program that supports faculty working on projects that meet the University’s strategic plan expectation for excellence through “breakthrough advancements” in humanities, social sciences and creative endeavors.

 

Our goal is to support innovative, high-performance research or creative endeavors that have the potential to generate prestigious publications (books or articles in highly visible publications), fellowships, creative projects, or grant proposals to highly prestigious private and public organizations, including industry and foundations.

 

(a) conceptual and methodological innovation or originality in creative endeavors 

(b) significant contribution to literature or creative domains, and 

(c) planned future external funding sources and programs of the proposed study 

  

(a) work conducted by individual faculty members; 

(b) collaborative projects among faculty within the College of Liberal Arts; and 

(c) collaborative projects between faculty in CLA and other colleges/disciplines at Purdue

  

 

A faculty committee appointed by the CLA Dean will evaluate the applications. The CLA Associate Dean for Research and Graduate Education will also serve on the committee. The CLA Dean may ask other faculty inside or outside of the College or University to serve as ad-hoc reviewers, where their participation would provide the committee with the expertise needed for reviewing specific proposals. 

 

In making the final decisions on awards, consideration may be given to whether a faculty member has received one of these types of grants previously. In judging the proposals, reviewers will be asked to use several criteria: 

(a) conceptual and/or methodological innovation proposed; 

(b) significance of contributions to the humanities, social science or the arts; 

(c) the quality of the applicants' previous research; and 

(d) the degree to which the proposed activities will potentially increase the applicants' success in future   scholarship and applications for external funding 

  

Eligibility: 

All CLA tenured faculty - as well as tenure-track faculty - are eligible to apply for EXCEL. A faculty member may submit only one application - which should be previously discussed with and approved by the department head. The final, official approval mechanism will be embedded in the InfoReady application form, which is linked at the bottom of this page. Once the application has been submitted by the faculty, the DH will be pinged by the system to sign-off on it via electronic signature.

 

Level of Funding: 

The proposals may solicit up to $25,000.00. Each grant will be for one calendar year.

 

Timeline:

The starting date for funded projects will be January 1 and all funds must be expended by December 31 (or the balance of funds will be returned to CLA at that time).

 

Project Report:

All previous recipients of internal Purdue CLA Research Grants must submit a brief 1- to 2-page report of the outcomes of their previous grants. Reports must include information about all grant and fellowship proposals and awards submitted since the funded grant application as well as the status of any publications, exhibitions, presentations, and/or other outcomes of the funded project. Previous recipients of internal Purdue CLA Research Grant Awards greater than $10,000.00 must have subsequently submitted external grant and/or fellowship application requests that total at least $25,000.00 before another award may be granted. 

  

Allowable Expenses:

Faculty may request funding for a wide variety of research expenses related to data collection, data analysis, and writing - including for grant preparation. Examples of allowable use of funds include travel to research sites, compensation for research participants, commissioning data collection through research firms, purchase of existing secondary data, payments to undergraduate research interns, graduate research assistant support, and summer salary support. 

 

Funds may be requested for the expenses of participation in workshops or conferences that are necessary for conducting the proposed research and for discussion or dissemination of the outcomes of the research. Funds cannot be used for more than one month of summer salary and the total amount dedicated to summer salary cannot be greater than $10,000.00.

 

 

Specific details about the submission process can be found on InfoReady at the URL below. You must first log in to InfoReady with your Purdue Career Account and 2-factor authentication.

 

 2025-26 CLA EXCEL Grant Program Application InfoReady Form.