Note: UEC grants cannot be charged to p-cards, but faculty who receive UEC grants will receive information in their grant award letter about the possibility of an advance.
Deadline: Applications for trips within the current fiscal year are due by May 15, and must be completed at least two weeks prior to travel.
Description
Funds are provided annually for the purpose of supporting faculty travel to professional meetings in which a faculty member is a participant.
Professional meetings are defined to be meetings attended substantially by one’s professional peers. Fundable participation in professional meetings may take several forms. A faculty member may receive 100% funding (of allowable expenses up to $1,550) to give a formal presentation of original scholarly work at a professional meeting. (In the arts, a performance or exhibition will be regarded as the equivalent of a presentation of original scholarly work.) The method of presentation may vary among disciplines, but the presentation will be considered for 100% funding if the material presented is equivalent in depth and scope to the standard research presentation in the discipline.
A faculty member may receive funding at 60% for participation in a professional meeting that involves a different form of participation that is recognized in the program (e.g., service as a commentator, respondent, or discussant; serving as a chair of a session; organizing a symposium; serving as a meeting organizer; or serving as a member of the executive committee of the sponsoring organization). Funding in these additional categories will be contingent on presentation of evidence of substantial prior preparation for the session in question and of an explanation of the scholarly content of planned participation. A petition to the Enrichment Committee may be made for 100% funding if the faculty member is engaged in other forms of significant work that the faculty member believes warrant funding.
Presentation of substantially the same paper or performance will be funded only one time. Multiple Puget Sound authors of a presentation will be funded to a maximum of $3,100 for all co-authors combined.
Faculty participating in conferences that involve travel outside the United States will need to register their travel prior to departure. Information on how to register travel and request approval for travel to high-risk areas is available on the University’s Travel Advisory site. University funding for conferences that involve international travel will not be released until the travel is registered.
Eligibility
These funds are intended for the use of full-time, ongoing faculty and artists-in-residence for conferences occurring during the fiscal year of their employment. Faculty on sabbatical leave will be eligible for funding on a least-cost basis either from Tacoma to the meeting place or from the sabbatical location to the meeting place.
Application
Apply here at least two weeks prior to the date of travel.
The following should be included in the initial request for conference participation funds:
- An abstract or copy of the paper or other scholarly work to be presented;
- Verification of the paper’s acceptance.
Allowable Expenses
Professional meeting funds may be used to cover only these allowable expenses:
- Registration fees (including organization membership fees when required for a lower registration rate)
- Lodging during the meeting
- Meals during the conference and while traveling to and from the meeting
- Transportation expenses to and from and during the meeting (e.g., flight, train, mileage, public transportation, taxi or ride-sharing)
- Parking fees related to meeting transportation (e.g., airport parking during the meeting)
Deadline
Applications for first trips are acted upon in the order received, and they must be received by May 15 for consideration in the current fiscal year. Funding of second trips occurs on May 16 if any funds remain in the travel pool. If the amount of money remaining is insufficient to fund all approved second trips fully, second trips will be funded partially, with a funding differential of approximately twenty percent favoring the applications of untenured tenure-line faculty. For example, depending on the amount of money in the pool, applications of untenured tenure-line faculty might be funded at 80% and others at 60%, or the former might be funded at 60% and others at 40%. The percentages actually used will vary from year to year, depending on funding. Second trip requests should be submitted as early as possible but will not be funded prior to May 16. Third trips will not be funded.
Reporting
In order to obtain reimbursement for conference travel costs, faculty must complete the UEC Faculty Reimbursement Request Form within ten days of the conclusion of the conference. This Form will require the following to be uploaded:
- Scanned PDFs of receipts. Receipts must be in the faculty member’s name and must have the date and amount paid clearly displayed.
- Evidence of participation at the conference, such as a copy of the final conference program or a copy of the paper/scholarly work. Reimbursement will not be processed until after the travel has concluded, and until evidence of participation is provided.