The Lyle Spencer Awards Program to Fund Research Proposals of up to $ Million

The Spencer Foundation is delighted to announce that the application for The Lyle Spencer Research Awards Program is now open. The program is intended to support intellectually ambitious research oriented to improving the practice of education, independent of any particular reform agendas or methodological strictures. The Lyle Spencer Research Awards Program is an assertion of foundations determination to search for and support challenging, original, and constructive research. The program is open to a range of proposals exploring questions, topics, problems, and opportunities that are both interesting and important. Hallmarks of the research that the foundation seeks to fund include conceptual and empirical attention to educational practice and a determination to approach research with well-reasoned and constructive doubt toward the unexamined assumptions that shape current beliefs, actions, and research agendas.
Eligibility:
To be eligible to apply for the Spencer research award, researchers must fulfill the following requirements:
[1] Principal Investigators (PIs) and Co-PIs must have an earned doctorate in an academic discipline or professional field or appropriate experience in an education research-related profession.
[2] The PI must be affiliated with a college, university, school district, non-profit research facility, or non-profit cultural institution that is willing to serve as the administering organization if the grant is awarded. The Spencer Foundation does not award grants directly to individuals.
[3] Proposals are accepted from the U.S. and internationally, however, all proposals must be submitted in English and budgets must be proposed in U.S. Dollars.
[4] The Lyle Spencer Research Award budgets are limited to $1,000,000, including indirect costs, but the budget may include indirect costs equaling 15% of the direct costs of the proposed project.
[5] PIs and Co-PIs may only hold one active research grant from the Spencer Foundation at a time.
[6] No research topics are ruled out categorically. It is essential, however, that the proposal articulate clearly how the research is intended to contribute ultimately to improvements in practice.
[7] The Foundation funds research projects that span the life course (i.e., from early childhood to adult learning) as well as those that focus on contexts outside of school.

Successful applicants will receive full financial coverage for their proposed research. The foundation believes that work that may have a lasting impact on the understanding and improvement of educational practice comes in all sizes. Powerful work is intrinsically more expensive, and in recognition of that reality, the foundation is prepared to fund proposals of up to $1 million.

About the Spencer Foundation:
The Spencer Foundation was established in 1962 by the scientist Lyle M. Spencer. The Foundation is intended, by Spencer's direction, to investigate ways in which education, broadly conceived, can be improved around the world. The Spencer Foundation received its major donation upon Spencer's death in 1968 and began formal grantmaking in 1971. Since that time, the Foundation has made grants totaling nearly $500 million. Since the begging, the Foundation has been dedicated to the belief that research is important to the improvement in education. The Foundation is honored to support high-quality investigation of education through its research programs and committed to strengthening and renewing the educational research community worldwide through its fellowship and training programs and other related activities.