Wallace Scholarly Activities (WSA) Program

The Wallace Scholarly Activities (WSA) program funds faculty professional activities to promote ongoing faculty development and a community of active, engaged scholars at Macalester College. Competitive grants of up to $6,000 are reviewed twice a year, once in the fall semester and once in the spring.

Who can apply

Faculty: all faculty members (tenure-track, tenured, MSFEO participants, and non-tenure-track) with at least one contracted year of Macalester service remaining.
How often: one application per semester.
Faculty-student research: student stipends for collaborative research are funded through the Collaborative Summer Research (CSR) program rather than WSA.

What WSA supports

Commonly supported

Travel to conduct research, to collaborate or consult with colleagues on scholarly or creative work, to present scholarly work at a conference, or to perform or exhibit creative work in an appropriate venue
Materials and equipment directly supporting your scholarly or creative work, such as equipment for the stage, studio, laboratory, or field; software; and datasets
Paid services directly supporting your scholarly or creative work, such as transcription of interviews, routine preparation of samples, digitization of documents, translation of research materials, research assistance, and indexing
Short-term trips during a sabbatical, taken from your sabbatical base location

Guidelines for specific expenses

Students for paid services. You may employ Macalester students to provide paid services. Students are paid according to college guidelines, bi-weekly, at the standard hourly rate plus fringe benefits.
Estimates. Get the best possible estimates for expenses and specify them as completely as possible. The more detail, the better.

Not supported

Pedagogical development, faculty salaries, and food and lodging for sabbatical leaves.

Awards and deadlines

The maximum WSA award is $6,000 for this funding cycle. SPA may recommend partial funding.

Round	Applications typically due	For activities taking place
Spring	Third Monday of February	June 1 – December 31
Fall	First Monday of November	January 1 – May 31

Specific deadlines are posted with each semester’s call for applications.

Spending your award

Each award is for activities within its round’s window: June 1 to December 31 for the spring round, and January 1 to May 31 for the fall round.
Spend your award within that window. Funds do not carry over into the next round’s window.

Retroactive requests

Opportunities sometimes arise between funding rounds. You can pay travel expenses out of pocket and then apply in the next round for a retroactive request of up to $6,000.

Retroactive requests are evaluated using the same criteria, and funding is not guaranteed.
Requests may reach back only to expenses incurred in the same fiscal year, on or after the prior June 1.
An approved request offsets actual out-of-pocket expenses only. WSA does not reimburse FTR allocations, external grants, start-up funds, departmental funds, or other institutional discretionary funds.

How to apply

Application materials

Application form (Macalester login)
WSA application guidelines (Macalester login)

Research approvals

If your project involves human participants, live vertebrate animals, or other regulated research, it needs approval before work begins. See Research Compliance for which review applies and whom to contact.

How proposals are selected

Grants are awarded competitively. The Provost makes final decisions based on advice from the faculty members of the Strategic Planning and Analysis Committee (SPA).

Highest preference

Highest preference goes to scholarly and creative activities that:

contribute directly to your overall scholarly or creative agenda, as described on the application form;
have the greatest potential to enhance your scholarship or creative work, directly or by leveraging external funding; and
cannot be supported by FTR, start-up funds, or external funding.

Additional preference

Among proposals that meet these criteria, preference goes to faculty who:

have received less WSA funding in the previous three years than other applicants with proposals of similar quality;
received funding before the previous three years and can show, if applicable, that it significantly enhanced their scholarly or creative work; or
are tenured or tenure-track.

Questions

The WSA program is managed through the Associate Provost’s Office.

Associate Provost: Dennis Cao, dcao@macalester.edu

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