Fellowships

Nationally and internationally competitive fellowships and awards (e.g. Guggenheim, NEH, ACLS) bring recognition and prestige to individual faculty members and to LSU as a whole. For some disciplines (e.g. arts, humanities), these are the primary mechanism for externally funded research and scholarship. LSU strongly encourages pursuit of these awards, and has developed guidelines to support the fellowship application process and to support in principle keeping the faculty member’s salary and benefits ‘whole’ to the extent possible.

Procedures for Application

LSU strongly supports the pursuit of fellowships by faculty scholars. In order to facilitate more fellowship applications, and because fellowships frequently have significant restrictions in terms of what they can or cannot fund, a set of guidelines for applying for fellowships have been developed.

  1. After identifying a fellowship opportunity, it is recommended that Fellowship Application Worksheet be filled out. This form should be filled out in conjunction with the relevant representative from the Dean’s office.
  2. The applicant should work directly with their research dean or the cognizant research officer in their college or school to determine if there are any financial stipulations tied to the fellowship that will require special approval or accommodation. This would include F&A waiver, waiver of fringe benefits cost, whether or not University resources will be needed to avoid reduction in salary or benefits, and other related matters. Appropriate human resources, payroll, and benefits officers as well as department chairs and deans should be consulted in this process if any of these or related conditions apply to the fellowship.
  3. It is imperative that applicants involve the relevant LSU offices as soon as feasible to facilitate planning. The university aspires to accommodate those individuals who submit their proposals through the appropriate channels and consult relevant offices early in the process. In principle, recipients should not face a financial penalty for accepting the award, and the faculty member’s salary and benefits should be kept “whole” to the extent possible.

Applicants should note that many awards are less than the regular academic year salary and often will not pay employee benefits. Accordingly, it is not possible to specify a blanket financial arrangement for salary and benefits that would be applicable in all cases. However, arrangements should include a combination of the award amount, and the department (or equivalent), college, and university funds to meet, but not exceed, the faculty member’s normal academic year salary and benefits. Additionally, the home academic units (department/program/college) should be able to replace the instructional and other responsibilities of the recipient. Awards should be funded through LSU, to the extent allowed by the funding agency.

When appropriate arrangements have been coordinated to meet the stipulations of the fellowship and keep the faculty member’s salary and benefits ‘whole’ in the event an award is made, the fellowship application process should proceed in the same way a regular grant proposal submission would.

For example:

  1. If the fellowship is one that can be awarded to the institution, it should go through the standard procedure of being electronically routed for review by the Office of Sponsored Programs via GeauxGrants. The 7 working day review rule applies to fellowships as it does to all other funding requests.
  2. If the fellowship is one that is awarded to the individual and not the institution, it is the responsibility of the applicant, in conjunction with her/his cognizant research dean or the dean’s designee, and the department chair or administrative equivalent, to adhere to the submission procedures and guidelines outlined by the sponsoring agency.