William T. Grant Scholars Program
The William T. Grant Scholars Program supports career development for promising early-career researchers. The program funds five-year research and mentoring plans that significantly expand researchers’ expertise in new disciplines, methods, and content areas.
Applicants should have a track record of conducting high-quality research and an interest in pursuing a significant shift in their trajectories as researchers. We recognize that early-career researchers are rarely given incentives or support to take measured risks in their work, so this award includes a mentoring component, as well as a supportive academic community.
Focus Areas
Reducing Inequality
In this focus area, we fund research studies that examine programs, policies, or practices to reduce inequality in the academic, social, behavioral, or economic outcomes of young people ages 5–25 in the United States, along dimensions of race, ethnicity, economic standing, sexual or gender minority status (e.g., LGBTQ+ youth), language minority status, or immigrant origins.
Research Interests
Our research interests center on studies that examine ways to reduce inequality in youth outcomes. We welcome descriptive studies that clarify mechanisms for reducing inequality or elucidate how or why a specific program, policy, or practice operates to reduce inequality. We also welcome intervention studies that examine attempts to reduce inequality.
Recognizing that findings about programs and practices that reduce inequality will have limited societal impact until the structures that create inequality in the first place have been transformed, the Foundation is particularly interested in research to uproot systemic racism and the structural foundations of inequality that limit the life chances of young people.
We invite studies from a range of disciplines, fields, and methods, and we encourage investigations into various youth serving systems, including justice, housing, child welfare, mental health, and education.
Improving the Use of Research Evidence
In this focus area, we support research studies that examine strategies to improve the use of research evidence in ways that benefit young people ages 5-25 in the United States. We seek proposals for studies that advance theory and build empirical knowledge on ways to improve the use of research evidence by policymakers, public agency leaders, organizational managers, intermediaries, community organizers, and other decision-makers that generally shape youth-serving systems in the United States.
While an extensive body of knowledge provides a rich understanding of specific conditions that foster the use of research evidence, we lack robust, validated strategies for cultivating them. What is required to create structural and social conditions that support research use? What infrastructure is needed, and what will it look like? What supports and incentives foster research use? And, ultimately, how do youth outcomes fare when research evidence is used? This is where new research can make a difference.
Research Interests
Our research interests in this focus area center on studies that examine strategies to improve the use, usefulness, and impact of research evidence in ways that benefit young people ages 5-25 in the United States. We welcome impact studies that test strategies for improving research use as well as whether improving research use leads to improved youth outcomes. We also welcome descriptive studies that reveal the strategies, mechanisms, or conditions for improving research use. Finally, we welcome measurement studies that explore how to construct and implement valid and reliable measures of research use.
Awards
Award recipients are designated as William T. Grant Scholars. Each year, four to six Scholars are selected.
Each Scholar receives exactly $425,000 over five years, including up to 7.5% indirect costs.
Awards begin July 1 of the award year and are made to the applicant’s institution.
The award must not replace the institution’s current support of the applicant’s research.
Capacity Building
The Foundation holds an annual retreat during the summer to support Scholars’ career development. Designed to foster a supportive environment in which Scholars can improve their skills and work, the retreat allows Scholars to discuss worksin-progress and receive constructive feedback on the challenges they face in conducting their projects. The retreat consists of workshops centered on Scholars’ projects, research design and methods issues, and professional development. The meeting is attended by Scholars, Scholars Selection Committee members, and Foundation staff and Board members. Scholars are also invited to attend other Foundation-sponsored workshops on topics relevant to their work, such as mixed methods, reducing inequality, and the use of research evidence in policy and practice.
Scholars may apply for an additional award to mentor junior researchers of color. The announcement and criteria for funding are distributed annually to eligible Scholars. Our goals for the mentoring grant program are two-fold. First, we want to support William T. Grant grantees in developing a stronger understanding of the career development issues facing their junior colleagues of color and to strengthen their mentoring relationships with them. Second, we seek to strengthen the mentoring received by Black, Indigenous, Latinx, and Asian or Pacific Islander American junior researchers and to position them for professional success. In the longer term, we hope this grant program will increase the number of strong, well-networked researchers of color doing research on the Foundation’s interests and help foster more diverse, equitable, and inclusive academic environments.
Eligibility
Eligible Organizations
The Foundation makes grants only to tax-exempt organizations. We do not make grants to individuals.
We encourage proposals from organizations that are under-represented among grantee institutions, including Historically Black Colleges and Universities, Hispanic-serving Institutions, Tribal Colleges and Universities, Alaska Native-Serving Institutions, Native Hawaiian-Serving Institutions, and Asian American Native American Pacific Islander Serving Institutions.
Eligible Applicants
Applicants must be nominated by their institutions. Major divisions of an institution (e.g., College of Arts and Sciences, Medical School) may nominate only one applicant each year. In addition to the eligibility criteria below, deans and directors of those divisions should refer to the Review Criteria to aid them in choosing their nominees. Applicants of any discipline are eligible.
Applicants must have received their doctorate within seven years of submitting their application. We calculate this by adding seven to the year the doctorate was conferred. In medicine, the seven-year maximum is dated from the completion of the first residency. The month in which the degree was conferred or residency completed does not matter for this calculation.
Applicants must be employed in career-ladder positions. For many applicants, this means holding a tenure-track position in a university. Applicants in other types of organizations should be in positions in which there is a pathway to advancement in a research career at the organization and the organization is fiscally responsible for the applicant’s position. The award may not be used as a post-doctoral fellowship.
Applicants outside the United States are eligible. As with U.S. applicants, they must pursue research that has compelling policy or practice implications for youth in the United States.
We strive to support a diverse group of researchers in terms of race, ethnicity, gender, and seniority, and we encourage research projects led by Black or African American, Indigenous, Latinx, and/or Asian or Pacific Islander American researchers.
Selection Criteria
Applicant
- Applicant demonstrates potential to become an influential researcher.
- Prior training and publications indicate the applicant’s ability to conduct and communicate creative, sophisticated research.
- Applicant has a promising track record of first authored, high-quality empirical publications in peer-reviewed outlets. The quality of publications is more important than the quantity.
- Applicant will significantly expand their expertise through this award. The applicant has identified area(s) in which the award will appreciably expand their expertise and has provided specific details in the research and mentoring plans. Expansion of expertise can involve a different discipline, method, and/or content area than the applicants’ prior research and training.
Research Plan
- Research plan aligns with one of the Foundation’s focus areas.
- Proposed research on reducing inequality should aim to build, test, or increase understanding of a program, policy, or practice to reduce inequality in the academic, social, behavioral, or economic outcomes of young people ages 5–25 in the United States.
- Proposed research on improving the use of research evidence should inform strategies to improve the use of research evidence in ways that benefit young people ages 5–25 in the United States.
- Proposals reflect a mastery of relevant theory and empirical findings, and clearly state the theoretical and empirical contributions they will make to the existing research base.
- Projects may focus on either generating or testing theory, depending on the state of knowledge about a topic.
- Although we do not expect that any one project will or should impact policy or practice, the findings should have relevance for policy or practice.
- Research plan reflects high standards of evidence and rigorous methods commensurate with the proposal’s goals. The latter years or projects of the research plan may, by necessity, be described in less detail than those of the first few, but successful applicants provide enough specificity for reviewers to be assured of the rigor and feasibility of the plan.
- Research designs, methods, and analysis plans clearly fit the research questions under study.
- Discussions of case selection, sampling, and measurement include a compelling rationale that they are well-suited to address the research questions or hypotheses. For example, samples are appropriate in size and composition to answer the study’s questions. Qualitative case selection—whether critical, comparative, or otherwise—are appropriate to answer the proposed questions.
- The quantitative and/or qualitative analysis plan demonstrate awareness of the strengths and limits of the specific analytic techniques and how they will be applied in the current project.
- If proposing mixed methods, plans for integrating the methods and data are clear and compelling.
- Where relevant, there is attention to generalizability of findings and to statistical power to detect meaningful effects.
- Research plan demonstrates adequate consideration of the gender, ethnic, and cultural appropriateness of concepts, methods, and measures.
- Research plan is feasible. The work can be successfully completed given the resources and time frame. Some research plans require additional funding, and in those cases, applicants have viable plans for acquiring that support.
- Research plan is cohesive, and multiple studies (if proposed) are well-integrated.
- Research plan will significantly extend the applicant’s expertise in new and significant ways. Applicant provides specific details about how the research activities will stretch their expertise.
Many applicants to the Scholars program are researchers trained in quantitative methods who identify learning qualitative methods as at least one area into which they will stretch their expertise. This is a laudable and valuable stretch that enriches the proposed research and develops new skills that can be carried into future projects. What is often missing from these proposals, however, is a robust set of activities to support such a stretch. Rather than a single activity, such as a monthly meeting with a mentor expert in qualitative methods, successful applicants detail a combination of activities, such as taking courses; enrolling in summer workshops; getting continuous feedback as they develop data collection tools, practice qualitative data collection techniques, and analyze qualitative data; and consulting with an advisory committee, in addition to frequent and regular meetings with a mentor expert in qualitative methods. New methodological and analytical skills take time and effort to develop, and reviewers expect to see research plans that reflect this.
Mentoring Plan
- Applicant proposes one to two mentors for the first two years of the award. Two is typical and recommended. (The mentoring plan for the latter years will be developed in consultation with Foundation staff after the second year of the program.)
- The mentoring plan and mentor letters demonstrate that all parties have identified and agreed on specific goals that expand the applicant’s expertise in the ways outlined in the research plan.
- Each mentor has appropriate credentials, expertise, and resources to aid the applicant’s acquisition of the new expertise; has a strong track record of mentorship; and demonstrates a commitment to mentoring the applicant.
- The mentoring plan and mentor letters convincingly detail how the mentor will aid the applicant in acquiring the new expertise. A compelling rationale and specific details about the mentoring activities are provided. This includes information about how the mentor and applicant will interact, how frequently, and around what substantive issues.
- Reviewers must be persuaded that the mentoring activities are sufficiently robust to result in the new expertise that has been identified, and that the mentor is making a sufficient time commitment. Careful consideration should be devoted to the types of activities and time that is required to learn different types of skills (e.g., new methods versus disciplinary perspectives). Examples of activities include advising on new disciplinary norms, data collection plans, analytic techniques, and publication; providing feedback on manuscripts; arranging training opportunities; facilitating access to new professional networks; recommending readings; and more general career advising.
- Award will add significant value to each mentoring relationship beyond what would normally occur.
- Applicants should propose relationships and activities that are unlikely to occur without the award. Deepening a relationship with a casual colleague, or developing a new relationship, adds greater value to an applicants’ mentoring network than proposing a former advisor or committee chair.
Institutional Support
- The supporting institution nominates the applicant. Each year, only one applicant may be nominated from a major division (e.g., College of Arts and Sciences, Medical School) of an institution.
- The institution is committed to providing the Scholar with sufficient resources to carry out the five-year research plan. This includes computer equipment, colleagues, administrative staff, research facilities, and the balance of their salary, absent denial of tenure or dramatic reduction in institutional funding.
- At least half of the Scholar’s paid time must be spent conducting research.
Application Review Process
First, Foundation staff screen abstracts, brief CVs, and, if warranted, full applications to determine whether they fit our research focus areas and potentially meet other Review Criteria. Next, the Scholars Selection Committee reviews the remaining applications. Each application receives detailed reviews by two Committee members. The Committee then chooses approximately 10 finalists, who will be invited to New York City for an interview in February 2027. Prior to the interview, finalists’ proposals are reviewed by two external reviewers.
During the interview, finalists respond to Committee members’ and external experts’ reviews. Following the interviews, the Selection Committee chooses four to six William T. Grant Scholars to recommend to the Board of Trustees for approval. Applicants will be notified of the Trustees’ decision by the end of March 2027.
