Wallace International Travel Grant

International Travel Grants award maximum is $4000.00

The Wallace International Travel program funds biannual awards (via one competition each semester) from the Wallace endowment to support short-term international travel to facilitate faculty scholarship.  Expenses for the program may include:

• brief trips to carry out research
• conference travel to disseminate scholarly work
• travel to collaborate with colleagues on scholarly work. 

The Wallace International Travel program does not support costs associated with the residential aspects of sabbaticals (lodging, meals).  However, a faculty member on sabbatical may apply for Wallace International Travel funds to offset costs associated for a short-term trip from the sabbatical base location.

The spirit of the Wallace International Travel program is to foster the professional development of as many Macalester community members as possible.  The prudent use of past College funds and the number of these awards are also important judgment criteria; equitable support of faculty over time is a goal.  These are shared resources. 

Competitive Wallace International Travel applications are those that make a strong case for the impact of proposed travel on professional development (e.g., How vital is the proposed trip in furthering scholarly goals?).  Since Faculty Travel and Research (FTR), start-up, and external grant funds can also fund scholarly objectives, a convincing case must be made for the need for additional College funds (e.g., Why have you prioritized FTR spending for other expenses and not for the travel proposed?  Why can external grant funds not be used for these expenses?).  There is admittedly a tension between proposals where PI funding is already present (i.e., rewarding faculty who have raised external funds via leverage of further College resources) to supporting proposals where faculty opportunities for external funding are remote. 

Awards are administered through the Jan Serie Center for Scholarship and Teaching; the Resource and Planning Committee (RPC) makes award recommendations.  All faculty members (tenure-track, tenured, MSFEO participants, and non-tenure track) with at least one contracted year remaining of Macalester service may submit proposals.  Applications from tenured and tenure-track faculty receive higher priority than those from non-tenure track faculty, but all applications are considered.

Proposal pressure for Wallace International Travel grants has increased in recent years, as has the average amount requested.  Effective spring 2011, RPC established an award maximum of $4000.  Proposed award budgets that exceed $4000 will not be considered.  For travel where anticipated costs are expected to be greater than $4000, faculty are urged to identify likely additional expenses within their proposal narrative (but not in the proposed award budget), as well as how these expenses would be paid (e.g., remainder of FTR, out-of-pocket) if Wallace funding is awarded.  Applicants are encouraged to obtain the best possible estimates for airfare and lodging, as these costs typically compose the majority of most awards.  “Other” expenses in the proposed budget must be specified as completely as possible for consideration.

• If you plan to travel between June 1st and December 31st, you should apply in the spring round of funding (applications due the third Monday of February).
• If you plan to travel between January 31st and May 31st, you should apply in the fall round of funding (applications due the first Monday of November).

Travel opportunities sometimes arise between the two times that RPC makes funding decisions. For these situations, faculty may decide to pay for travel expenses out of their own pocket, and then apply during the next round of Wallace International Travel decisions for a “retroactive” request of up to $4000. “Retroactive” applications are subject to the same proposal criteria as above.  Faculty, thus, are not guaranteed that their “retroactive” request will be funded.

The Wallace International Travel program does not reimburse FTR allocations, external grants, start-up funds, departmental funds or other institutional discretionary funds; if a “retroactive” request is approved, it can only help to offset out-of-pocket expenses incurred by the faculty member.