Wednesday, December 1, 2010

Dirksen Congressional Center Research Awards

The Dirksen Congressional Center, a non-profit organization named for Everett McKinley Dirksen, has invited applications for its 2011 Congressional Research Awards.

Here's the announcement:
DEADLINE: All proposals must be received no later than March 1, 2011.

The Dirksen Congressional Center invites applications for grants to fund
research on congressional leadership and the U.S. Congress. A total of up to
$35,000 will be available in 2011. Awards range from a few hundred dollars to
$3,500. Stipends will be awarded to individuals (not organizations) on a
competitive basis. Grants will normally extend for one year. In some
circumstances, the Center will make more than one award to a single individual
in consecutive years, but not more than three awards to the same person in a
five-year period.

The competition is open to individuals with a serious interest in studying
Congress. Political scientists, historians, biographers, scholars of public
administration or American studies, and journalists are among those eligible.
The Center encourages graduate students who have successfully defended their
dissertation prospectus to apply and awards a significant portion of the funds
for dissertation research. Applicants must be U.S. citizens who reside in the
United States.

The awards program does not fund undergraduate or pre-Ph.D. study.
Organizations are not eligible. Research teams of two or more individuals are
eligible. No institutional overhead or indirect costs may be claimed against a
Congressional Research Award.

We accept only proposals submitted via the online application form posted at
http://www.dirksencenter.org/CRAForm/form.html. The form consists of the
following elements and must not exceed nine pages when printed (excluding the
Application Summary) --Application Summary, Reference Letter, Overhead Waiver
Letter, Congressional Research Awards Project Description, Budget, and
Curriculum Vita.

Applications which exceed the page limit and incomplete applications will NOT
be forwarded to the screening committee for consideration.

All application materials must be received on or before March 1, 2011. Awards
will be announced in April 2011.

Complete information about what kind of research projects are eligible for
consideration, what could a Congressional Research Award pay for, application
procedures, and how recipients are selected may be found at The Center's Web
site: http://www.dirksencenter.org/print_grants_CRAs.htm. PLEASE READ
THOROUGHLY. Frank Mackaman is the program officer -
mailto:fmackaman@dirksencenter.org.

The Center, named for the late Senate Minority Leader Everett M. Dirksen, is a
private, nonpartisan, nonprofit research and educational organization devoted
to the study of Congress and its leaders. Since 1978, the Congressional
Research Awards (formerly the Congressional Research Grants) program has paid
out $813,071 to support 390 projects.
For a sense of the types of projects that the Center has supported, check out the list of previous award recipients.