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Research support

Finding funding

Discover ways to fund your projects with resources and support from Mary Lou Fulton Teachers College, the university or external organizations.

The MLFTC internal grants program, coordinated by the Office of Scholarship and Innovation, supports the diverse research of all full-time faculty members. The program offers four funding streams.

  • Research grants
  • Research support monthly mini-grants
  • Learning communities
  • Learning Futures Collaboratives

Research grants

Research grants support individual or group research projects intended to have a clear, visible impact such as securing external grant funding or contributing towards publications. The internal research grants program is competitive with proposals evaluated by a team of peers on key criteria: intellectual merit, feasibility, and promise of impact. Call for proposals are released each spring semester, with awards and funding decisions made to align with the upcoming fiscal year.

2023-24 Research Grants

We have released the 2023-24 MLFTC Internal Grants Call for Proposals. Two types of funding support are offered: Learning Futures Collaboratives and individual or group research and scholarship projects. Please use this budget template when submitting proposals. Proposals are due April 17, 2023.

2021-22 Research Grant Recipients

  • Dannah Henriksen & Natalie Gruber (Ed.D student): The Creation of Arizona's First Mindful School District: A Systems Wide Evaluation
  • Pamela Kulinna, Hans van der Mars, Allison Ross: The State of the State: Representative Sampling of Physical Activity Opportunities in Schools in Arizona
  • Margarita Pivovarova & Gustavo Fischman: Teachers vs. Teachers: Where is the Consensus?
  • Chengan Yuan, Erin Rotheram-Fuller, Juliet Hart Barnett: Effects of Sibling-Mediated Intervention for Children with Autism

2020-21 Research Grant Recipients

  • Melanie Bertrand: Youth Participatory Action Research (YPAR) and the Potential for Equity-Oriented Change in Policies and Practices 
  • Carla Firetto: Exploring Active Learning Exercises in Introductory Anatomy and Physiology Courses
  • Meseret Hailu: Experiences of Black Immigrant Women in Undergraduate Engineering: A Basis for Understanding
  • Jeongeun Kim and Gustavo Fischman: Talent, Ambition, Academic Capital and Luck: Research Awards and the Construction of Influence and Merit in Education
  • Lydia Ross, Medha Dalal and Adam Carberry (The Polytechnic School): Evaluating the Efficacy of an Engineering Education Professional Development for High School Guidance Counselors
  • Mi Yeon Lee: Developing preservice teachers’ algebraic reasoning through pattern generation activities
  • Jeanne Powers: Imagine the Possibilities: Implementing an Innovative Educational Model

2019 Research Grant Recipients

  • Kathleen Farrand: Stepping into interdisciplinary learning with dramatic inquiry and 3D printing
  • Michelle Jordan, Clark Miller (School for the Future of Innovation in Society), Steve Zuiker: Teacher-student teams for community-based energy engineering projects
  • Pamela Kulinna, Hans van der Mars, Michelle Jordan: Sustainability in whole-of-school health programming
  • Carrie Sampson, Melanie Bertrand, David Garcia: Democratic participation toward educational equity in the era of school choice
  • Yi Zheng, Kevin Close (PhD Candidate, Learning, Literacies and Technology): Applying translanguaging theory to testing: Designing a new technology-enhanced accommodation for English language learners

2018 Research Grant Recipients

  • Katie Bernstein: Discourse as destiny in dual language education? A multi-scalar ethnography of language policy
  • Katie Bernstein, Kate Anderson: Teacher Beliefs about Multilingual Learners: Understanding Language Ideologies to Inform How We Teach about Language Learning
  • Ying-Chi Chen: Productive Management of Uncertainty: Supporting Science Teachers to Raise, Maintain, and Reduce Uncertainty toward Student Conceptual Development in Argumentation
  • Carla Firetto, JP Hyatt, Jeffrey Kingsbury, Tonya Penkrot (co-PIs from College of Integrative Sciences and Arts): Supporting Undergraduate Students’ Construction of an Integrated Understanding of Anatomy and Physiology
  • Jeongeun Kim, Yeukai Mlambo (postdoctoral scholar): Is Taste for Science Enough? Exploring Factors that Influence Career Aspirations of Engineering Students
  • Keon McGuire, Saskias Casanova (UC Santa Cruz): The Lived Experiences of Black Muslim students attending a Predominantly White Institution
  • Andrea Weinberg, Brent Maddin:Teacher candidate affordances and perceptions of efficacy in collectively-taught elementary and typical student teaching settings

2017 Research Grant Recipients

  • Mildred Boveda: Toward Establishing Evidence of External Validity for the Intersectional Competence Measure
  • Lauren Harris: Teachers’ Perceptions of Instructional Significance for History
  • Bryan Henderson: Braincandy: Providing Students Authentic, Engaging, and SAFE Spaces to Articulate and Refine their Thinking with Others
  • Yi-Chun Hong, Ming-Hung Kao (School of Mathematical and Statistical Sciences): Advancing the Understanding of Online Collaborative Learning Experience in Statistical Learning
  • Wendy Oakes, Kathleen Farrand: Induction Experiences for Early Childhood Special Educators: Using Dramatic Inquiry to Increase Student Engagement and Positive Social Interactions (DIPSI)
  • Hyejin Park: The Impact of Shared Reading on Parents’ and Their Children’s Attitudes Toward People with Disabilities
  • Jeanne Powers, Margarita Pivovarova*: Immigrants, Achievement, and Third-Generation Isolation: Insights from PISA 2003-2012
  • Hans Van der mars, Pamela Kulinna: Public High School Physical Activity Facility Use During Non-school Hours

* non-funded Co-PI

2016 Research Grant Recipients

  • Audrey Beardsley, Kevin Close (PhD Student), Clarin Collins*: Teacher Evaluation Systems as Based upon Growth and Value-Added Models (VAMs) after the Every Student Succeeds Act (ESSA): A National Overview Revisited
  • Melanie Bertrand, Sybil Durand and Saskias Casanova (both from College of Liberal Arts & Sciences): Harnessing Interdisciplinary Research to Examine the Relationship between Student Voice and School Change toward Equity
  • Ying-Chih Chen, Jaclyn Hernandez: Supporting Preservice Teachers to Implement Argumentation in Science Classrooms
  • Danah Henriksen, Michelle Jordan, Mathew Evans (PhD Student): Building Learning Experiences with Design Thinking, Creativity, and Entrepreneurship: A Study of 3 Day Startup
  • Mi Yeon Lee: Improving Preservice Teachers’ Noticing Expertise and Beliefs Through Methods Courses Incorporated Technology
  • Margarita Pivovarova, Jorge Sefair (School of Computing, Informatics, and Decision Systems Engineering): Long-Term Teacher-School Matching Algorithm
  • Yi Zheng: Advancing Computerized Adaptive Testing through Participant-Based Research and Open Source Platform Tools

* non-funded Co-PI

Recurring monthly opportunity for all full-time MLFTC faculty to apply for funds to cover small costs that may arise during ongoing research projects. Faculty can apply for these funds to be used for purchasing items such as software, renewing site licenses, acquiring audio or video recorders, transcription service, etc., for use in existing research projects. See a list of past recipients and their projects.

Research Support Mini-Grant Application Information

Learning Communities are modest funding opportunities to support informal groups of faculty, staff and graduate students to convene around a topic of shared interest with an overarching goal to foster engagement and conversation around important topics through the school year.

2021 Learning Communities

  • InSciEdOut – Science Education: Bryan Henderson
  • Engaging Black Women’s Literature and Epistemologies: Jeanne Powers, Lirio Patton
  • Garden Based Education: Andrea Weinberg, Steve Zuiker

2020 Learning Communities

  • Education Design Scholars: Kevin Close
  • Engaging Black Women’s Literature and Epistemologies: Mildred Boveda
  • Garden Based Education: Andrea Weinberg
  • InSciEdOut – Science Education: Bryan Henderson

2019 Learning Communities

  • Applied Behavior Analysis: Juliet Hart Barnett, Sam DiGangi, Stan Zucker, Sarup Mathur, Erin Rotheram-Fuller, Kathleen Puckett
  • InSciEdOut – Science Education: Bryan Henderson

2018 Learning Communities

  • InSciEdOut – Science Education: Bryan Henderson
  • Technology Infusion: Teresa Foulger, Ray Buss, Keith Wetzel, Jodie Donner

2017 Learning Communities

  • Higher Education Internationalization: Aryn Baxter, Yeukai Mlambo (Postdoctoral Scholar), Molly Ott, Jeongeun Kim
  • Using Design Thinking to Link In-Service Teaching with University Faculty: William Butler, Jessica Debiase, Kathleen Puckett
  • Serving Youth in Juvenile Justice: Sarup Mathur, Heather Griller Clark
  • InSciEd Out – science education: Bryan Henderson
  • Environmental and Sustainability Education: Eileen Merritt, Molina Walters, Leanna Archambault, Dianne McKee, Karen Schedler, Annie Hale

Learning Futures Collaboratives are intended to meet the goals of developing future-focused, ideas-driven, high-impact research agendas among MLFTC faculty and graduate students. Collaborative groups apply to form Learning Futures Collaboratives, as supported by the MLFTC Internal Grants Program.


External funding

The Research Development and Advancement team assists MLFTC faculty and staff in obtaining funding for sponsored research and projects. for creative, use-inspired research projects. View active and recurring funding opportunities on the college’s funding calendar.

Funding calendar

Funding.asu.edu is ASU’s entry point for university-wide research advancement activities. Features include:

  • a wide range of information and descriptions for funding and resources

  • user-defined funding alerts based on research interests via ASU’s funding database

  • access to research news, blogs, forums and training opportunities

The site also explains ASU’s process for determining eligibility for limited submission opportunitiesFor more information regarding grant proposal support services offered at ASU, email mlftcresearch@asu.edu.

 

MLFTC’s Development Team assists faculty with idea generation and resources to advance research and sponsored projects supported by private foundations and individual donors. For more information, email Ashley O’Brion, Director of Development for MLFTC at Ashley.OBrion@asufoundation.org

ASU’s Office of Corporate and Foundation Relations helps ASU faculty find resources to advance their work and builds meaningful philanthropic relationships with corporate and foundation benefactors of ASU. Learn more about the ASU Foundation.

Candid maintains a comprehensive database on U.S. and global philanthropic and corporate grant-makers and their funding opportunities. It also operates research, education, and training programs designed to advance knowledge of philanthropy at every level. ASU provides staff and faculty with free access to Candid’s Foundation Directory Online

Grants.gov provides a database central portal that lists all grant programs within the U.S. federal government, where organizations and individuals can find and apply for grants from the federal government. Grants.gov is the single access point for over 1,000 grant programs offered by the 26 federal agencies that offer grants.

Pivot is a searchable database of external funding opportunities from federal, non-federal and global sponsors. View the guide on using Pivot to learn how to create a profile and program automatic funding search alerts.

Graduate and Postdoctoral Extramural Support (GRAPES) is an extensive database, created and maintained by UCLA, to help graduate students search for funding opportunities (scholarships, fellowships, research opportunities) from institutions all around the world.