The Women and Gender Collaborative[1] is accepting grant proposals for innovative projects that promise to create long-term positive impacts around women and gender at CSU to be funded for a 2-year period beginning in the 2017-18 academic year. Interested individuals, departments and campus units are invited to apply.

The Collaborative grant program recognizes that needs can vary across different units, for different people, and that those who operate every day within a department, unit, or division are more likely to know how to appropriately and effectively respond to those needs.

“Our goal is to build institutional support to continually grow and develop successful projects and programs that promote equity, inclusion, and the well-being for all members of our campus community,” said Cori Wong, director of the Collaborative. “The idea is to provide support to really integrate targeted projects into the culture of a unit, to make it part of what a unit does to contribute to the overall efforts we see happening across CSU.”

The Collaborative will seed selected projects with up to $12,000 for two years, and provide assistance in development of the projects. The two-year time frame is designed to enable projects to achieve proof of concept and acquire sufficient evidence of impact to help project organizers procure additional funding from other sources.

Project proposals must include a plan for how the impact, quality, and value of a proposed project will be consistently evaluated and assessed in ways that will inform a project’s evolution and development over the course of the award. All proposals will be reviewed by members of the Women and Gender Collaborative Advisory Board.

Project Objectives

Preference for funding will be given to project proposals that demonstrate the ability to realize one or more of the following objectives:

• Intentionally develop, support, or produce long-term positive effects for women at CSU and/or broadly improve the campus culture and climate around gender
• Provide substantial leadership development and/or professional development opportunities for women (as both project leads, collaborators, and participants)
• Encourage men to become actively educated, informed, and engaged with supporting a campus culture and climate of gender equity
• Incorporate an inclusive emphasis that responds to the particular needs of those whose gender identity intersects with other identity categories such as race, ethnicity, class, sexuality, ability, culture, etc. (For example, project proposals might focus on needs of women of color, transgender employees and students, low-income women, non-tenure track women faculty, student parents, etc.)

In 2013, President Frank charged the University during his Fall Address to become the best place for women to work and learn, thereby initiating the President’s Women and Gender Initiative, which launched as the Women & Gender Collaborative last spring. Over the 2016-2017 academic year, the Collaborative supported five grant-funded projects[2] that have provided targeted opportunities for improving the culture and climate around gender at CSU and will continue for another academic year.

“While the campus community has been charged to improve the culture and climate around gender overall, these grants are especially helpful for supporting projects that address targeted issues and serve those whose gendered experiences are shaped by other aspects of their identities such as race, sexuality, rank and affiliation with the university,” said Wong.

How to Apply

Project proposals should be submitted via email to Katie Esquivel at Katie.Esquivel@colostate.edu[3] by 5:00 pm Monday, May 29, 2017. The application packet, additional information, and criteria can be found on the Women and Gender Collaborative’s website: http://thecollaborative.colostate.edu/special-projects/grant-funded-projects-at-csu/[4].