Scholarly and Creative Activity (SCA) Awards

Award information
SCA applicants can request up to $10,000.

Award period
SCA awards commence on July 1 and are funded for up to one year. No expenses may be incurred against the SCA funds prior to July 1.

Examples of allowable* uses of SCA funds include:

• Compensation for student assistants (hired as Student Workers) paid hourly wages.
• Funding for activities such as travel, gathering of archive resources, interviewing, and creative production activity.
• Summer salary for faculty on an academic year contract (SCA grant funds that support summer salary cannot exceed 100% allowed salary if combined with other university funds paid for other activities). Please note that the cost of employee related expenses (a.k.a. fringe costs) must be included as part of any salary requests.

*All expenditures must be in accordance with NAU financial and purchasing policies and guidelines.

The SCA program does not fund:

• Projects that fall under the definition of human subjects research but do not have current institutional review board (IRB) certification. IRB certification of proposed work may be pursued in concurrence with SCA applications, but funding to successful proposals will not be released until evidence of IRB approval is provided.
• Curriculum development, in which the product of the proposed activity is a curriculum or textbook to be used in classroom activities.
• Graduate student assistantships.
• Student research projects, theses, or dissertations.
• Faculty dissertation work.
• Faculty professional development activities.
• Travel to conferences or workshops that does not generate a scholarly product.
• Buyout of teaching.
• Equipment, computers, tablets, or other general purpose electronic devices.
• Requests to support activities that will take place during sabbatical leave.
• Salaries of non-NAU employees (as co-Investigator, Collaborator, or Consultant).
• Proposals that describe seed or pilot projects to enable extramural support from NIH, NSF, or similar funding agencies should apply through the Faculty Support Grants program instead of SCA.

Projects involving the use of human subjects must be reviewed by the institutional review board (IRB) to ensure compliance with federal regulations and with guidelines established in the NAU Faculty Handbook. Proposed work that requires IRB certification is acceptable under the proposed solicitation, but awards cannot be activated until all necessary regulatory compliance approvals have been received.

Failure to provide necessary regulatory compliance approvals within six months of project start will lead to administrative disqualification of the proposal.

If you need assistance with any assurance and compliance issues, contact the Office of the Vice President for Research at ovpr@nau.edu.

Purchases of goods and services (including payroll expenses) in support of SCA projects will be made through the awardee’s department business office. The department business officer will subsequently submit a transfer request to the SCA Program Coordinator, who will arrange to reimburse the department for the SCA expense.

• Application due date: The SCA application is due October 11 at 5 p.m.
• Please note: Late applications will not be reviewed. The time stamp on the email received by OVPR is the date and time the application is recorded as being received. Please confirm that your e-mail has been transmitted before shutting down your computer. We have many more applications than we can fund; therefore, the first review decision is to discard late applications.
• Award notification: Awardees will be notified on or before February 14, 2025.
• Award activation/Project start date: 5 p.m., Monday, July 1, 2025.

SCA guidelines

The body of the proposal must be written using the Narrative Template provided, and the document must be saved as a PDF. The PDF document must be saved as follows: SCAYEAR_Last name of applicant_First name of applicant, e.g., SCA2023_Smith_John,

• SCA Project Narrative
• Submission portal

Applications for funding must be submitted electronically through the submission portal. Applicants must complete all informational sections in the portal and attach the completed Narrative Template as a PDF. Please direct any questions regarding this process to ovpr@nau.edu.

Priority will be given to the meritorious proposals that most clearly articulate significance and value, creativity and innovation, the abilities and qualifications of the applicant, the project’s feasibility and work plan, and the applicant’s access to needed resources. Priority may also be given to junior faculty, early career faculty, and those who do not have a recent history of support through the SCA program or similar funding mechanisms.  Priority may also be considered for faculty who have an upcoming promotion evaluated on the merits of the body of their scholarly work.