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Provost's Developmental Editing Grant

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Provost's Developmental Editing Grant

Competition Open March 1, 2025; Deadline April 21, 2025

The purpose of this award is to provide support to regular OU faculty in the arts, humanities, and interpretive social sciences in the completion of the final work necessary for rank advancement. Preference will be given to the completion of a single major work that disproportionately weighs in a promotion case.

Each awarded grant will provide $4500 (around 30 hours) of Developmental Editorial Support to a faculty member for writing development, especially of a single major project such as a book manuscript.

Developmental editing is one-on-one writing support for big-picture concept and flow development, rather than mechanics. Developmental editors may coach writers on everything from outline and structure planning to chapter-by-chapter feedback. The Forum will work with Awardees to choose an appropriate developmental editor for their project.

Grantees are expected to be actively circulating drafts to the developmental editor during the fellowship perioed. This support can take place over one semester, two semesters, or the summer months, but all funds must be expended within the upcoming fiscal year (July 2024-June 2025). This grant includes no salary supplement and no release from teaching duties.

Awardees should be able to demostrate significant concrete progress on their research portfolio by the end of the granting period.  

For this pilot round, developmental editing grants will be awarded to two (2) OU Regular Faculty.

Preference for this grant will be given to faculty who have been at the rank of associate professor for at least five years. All associate professors who earned the rank of Associate Professor before summer 2020 are encouraged to apply.

Evaluation of the the application will heavily weight proposals from faculty whose research/scholarly/creative activities have been significantly impacted by sustained service, teaching or other extenuating life circumstances.

Sensitive to the time constraints of the primary audience for this grant, the Forum is requesting the following materials:

  1. Project Description. For book projects, send your book proposal. 
  2. For other kinds of research and creative activity, send a detailed 5-10 page description of your project that includes a project description, explanation of the contribution of the project to your field, description of audience and impact, publication/performance details, and a highly detailed outline of the compoenent parts of the major work. 

    Keep in mind that your proposal will be read by a diverse group of faculty, some of whom may have limited knowledge about your proposed project. Therefore, the project narrative should keep jargon to a minimum.

  3. Project Status and Timeline (1 page)
  4. In up to one page, describe the current status of your book or major project. Briefly explain to the committee which aspects of project research and writing are complete, and which have yet to be completed. Provide a project timeline that explains how (with developmental editing support) the project could make substantial progress to completion by the end of the granting period. 

    If the project described is a book project, provide research, drafting, editing, and completion goals for each of the remaining chapters. For other kinds of research and creative activity, provide a development-completion timeline for each of the remaining component parts of the major work.

  5. Description of Major and Sustained Service or Extenuating Circumstances (1 page)
  6. Within the limits of one single-spaced page, describe the sustained service or other life committments that would make a developmental editor particularly helpful to the completion of your major project. The committee will be particularly interested in proposals the demonstrate a record of significant contribution to the University through service to students, colleagues, and the administrative tasks upon which the University depends to run. Please make sure to describe those aspects of your record in detail.

  7. Applicant Full CV

Proposal Submission: Save all component parts of the application as a single PDF (saved as [lastname]_PDEGrant). All applications for the Provost's Developmental Editing Grant must be submitted via email as a single PDF attachment sent to Humanities.Forum@ou.edu by the fellowship deadline. You will receive an email confirming receipt of your application.

At the conclusion of the grant period, the awardee is expected to submit a 1-2 page report to the grant program director, with copies to the academic director/chair and dean by September 30 of the year following the award. This report should describe the work completed during the fellowship period, especially as it relates to the completion and submission of the manuscript or major project.

All written publications (whether in hard copy or electronic form) should acknowledge the support of the Office of the Provost.

FOR FURTHER INFORMATION:

Please contact Kimberly Marshall, Faculty Director (Associate Professor, Department of Anthropology): kjm@ou.edu