Award Amount: $425,000 over five years
Concept Paper Due to Foundation Relations: 5/26/2025
Nomination Deadline: 7/1/2025

This 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. Major divisions (e.g., College of Arts and Sciences, Medical School) of an institution may nominate only one applicant each year. Applicants must have received their doctoral degree within seven years of submitting their application.

Research Focus Areas:

• Reducing Inequality

The focus Reducing Inequality centers on studies that examine ways to reduce inequality in outcomes of youth ages 5-25. The Foundation welcomes descriptive studies that clarify mechanisms for reducing inequality or elucidate how or why a specific program, policy, or practice operates to reduce inequality. They also welcome intervention studies that examine attempts to reduce inequality. Finally, they welcome studies that improve the measurement of inequality in ways that can enhance the work of researchers, practitioners, or policymakers.

• Improving the Use of Research Evidence

The Foundation’s research interests in Improving the Use of Research Evidence center on studies that examine strategies to improve the use, usefulness, and impact of evidence in ways that benefit young people ages 5-25 in the United States. They welcome impact studies that test strategies for improving research use as well as whether improving research use leads to improved youth outcomes. They also welcome descriptive studies that reveal the strategies, mechanisms, or conditions for improving research use. Finally, they welcome measurement studies that explore how to construct and implement valid and reliable measures of research use.

WSU Nomination Process

To apply for nomination from your school or college, you will need to submit a two-page summary, including your hypothesis, methodology, research goals, and mentorship plan. This must be sent to Foundation Relation Specialist, Jared Mouro, at jmouro@wayne.edu, by 5:00pm on May 26^th, 2025.

A nominee from each school or college will be chosen by a designee from within the school or college. Final decisions on nominees will be made by June 6^th, 2025, and nominees will be contacted no later than June 9^th, 2025.

You can read the full RFP here.