The Graduate School is pleased to announce that a limited number of Conference Travel Grants will be available for the 2007-08 academic year.  Please read this announcement carefully, as some details have changed since last year. 

The Graduate School is pleased to support the professional development of graduate students by providing a limited number of competitive Conference Travel Grants to both master's and doctoral students. These grants may be used toward travel and other expenses associated with participation in a professional meeting, and may be requested in advance.

The amount of the individual grants will depend on the location of the conference:

The number of awards will depend on the availability of funds. 

For AY 2007-08, applications should be submitted to the Graduate School Dean's office by 5 p.m. on one of the following dates: Monday, October 1, 2007; or Monday, January 28, 2008. Students who have participated in relevant conferences during the summer and who wish to apply for retroactive funding may do so in the October 1 competition. 

Applications should be sent as attachments to an email to Joyce Gray, jmg68@georgetown.edu. Applications must include the following materials:

• Some official notice of the conference (e.g., the URL of the conference website) and official evidence that the applicant has been invited to participate (e.g., a letter of invitation or a page from a website that includes the student's name as a participant).
  
• A brief statement, no longer than one page, explaining the student's academic interest in attending the conference. 
  
• An outline of the student's travel plans and a travel budget.
  
• The amount of funding the department has agreed to provide to support the student's travel request.  While we have increased the maximum amount of the Graduate School travel awards this year, we know that these awards will still not cover the full cost of a student's participation at a professional conference. We therefore strongly encourage all departments to contribute some share of the cost of their students' conference travel. Doing so demonstrates the department's commitment to the student and enables the Graduate School to maximize the number of graduate students we can supported.
  
• One letter of recommendation from a faculty member, preferably the student's thesis advisor or director of graduate studies. This letter should be no longer than one page and should explain the academic relevance of the conference to the student's degree objective.  This letter should be sent by the faculty member directly to Joyce Gray, jmg68@georgetown.edu by the application deadline.

Completed applications received by each deadline will be reviewed by a committee composed of two faculty members and the Treasurer of the Graduate Student Organization (GSO).  Awards will be announced approximately 4 weeks after the application deadline.

During each award cycle, approximately one-half of the total funds will be available for award. After each deadline, the committee will rank applications on the basis of perceived academic merit and the strength of the faculty letter of recommendation.  

Please note that a student may receive the equivalent of only one award per fiscal year, equal to the highest category for which he or she has applied. Here is a hypothetical example:  A student receives the maximum $500 award to participate in a conference held in the United States.  She is later invited to participate at another domestic conference, but she is not eligible for support, because $500 is the most that can be awarded for participation in domestic conferences. Still later, however, she receives a third invitation to present a paper at a conference in London. In this case, the student would be eligible for up to $500, which is the difference between the maximum award for an international conference ($1,000) and the amount she was awarded for the earlier domestic conference ($500).