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Preparing a Kinsey Grant Proposal

Kinsey Grant proposals are reviewed by the Department of Russian at faculty meetings, twice a year: before the end of the fifth week of the fall term and before the end of the fifth week of the spring term. You should begin early enough to allow for feedback by your advisor and revision of the draft proposal (see below). Kinsey funding can be combined with other funding resources.

 

Advisor

Students intending to apply for the grant should consult with the faculty member who has agreed to endorse the project and submit to him/her a draft as soon as possible. In consultation with this faculty member, you will work to define the focus and scope of your project.

Budget

When your proposal is in final form, you and your advisor should work out a budget for your project. Some of the categories you might include in your budget (depending, of course, on the type of work you will be doing) are: travel, housing, meals, supplies, fees and other relevant expenses. Your budget should be realistic. You will be expected to complete your project within the financial parameters outlined in your budget. This will require that you obtain estimates from appropriate sources — travel agencies, government and academic institutions, etc. — and use them to compute what the project will actually cost.

Release Form

Prior to activation of ANY student Kinsey Grant, a "Release to Accept a Kinsey Grant" must be signed by the Grantee and his/her parent or legal guardian. Please see the Department Administrator for details.

Guidelines to Writing Proposals

Each student seeking support through the Kinsey Fund should submit, in writing, a research proposal that includes the following:

  1. A 2-4 pages description of what you plan to do with this money and how it fits into your academic plans.
  2. A bibliography.
  3. A budget of all anticipated project expenses.
  4. If you expect to affiliate with another institution, please submit a letter of invitation or support from that institution.
  5. If you are unexpectedly faced with a change of your plans, whether before or after an approved project has started, contact your faculty advisor as soon as possible to discuss the situation.

Guidelines for Allowable Expenses

The first guideline for what constitutes an allowable expense is your own project budget. Beyond that, and as a general rule of thumb, allowable expenses include travel to, within, and from the project site; meals and lodging; and other expenses relating directly to your project. All expenses must comply with Dartmouth College financial policies, which are governed in turn by Internal Revenue Service regulations. Please visit the Finance website to view all policies in detail.

To help you gauge what is allowable and what is not, consider the following examples:

  • Daily travel to your place of work or study on the outskirts of Moscow and back to your room in the capital is an allowable expense. A bus trip to visit another Dartmouth student staying on the other side of the city is not. The tip you give to the cab driver who brought you from the airport to your living quarters is allowable; the bribe you paid the ticket agent to get you on an earlier flight is not.
  • Meals and lodging is a category that is interpreted very rigidly. Meals means the actual cost of breakfast, lunch and dinner, plus gratuity. Purchase of alcohol is not an allowable expense. If you have been awarded a per diem in lieu of meals, it will cover food items only. Personal expenses — e.g., deodorant, shaving cream — and other non-project-related expenses — e.g., laundry, movie, postcards to friends and family — are not allowable.
  • Other expenses can include such things as photocopying of library materials, doctor's visits and inoculations required of travelers.

 

Sample Student Kinsey Fund Projects

Sample of Kinsey Fund Projects.pdf

  • A six week summer internship by a rising senior Russian major at the Kitezeh Children's Community in the Kaluga region of Russia, organizing a summer camp for orphans and helping the community build homes
  • Intensive advanced Russian program at Indiana University before working as a journalist in Moscow for the Moscow Times, for a graduating senior Russian major
  • Travel to Kazan, Russia, for university courses, for a rising senior Russian major
  • Travel to Moscow to deliver a paper at a conference on Goncharov, a 19th century novelist, for a native Armenian in the Master's program in comparative literature
  • Travel to Ukraine for a junior Russian major's fall term volunteering in an orphanage in Komarivka, which inspired his senior thesis on the influence of the American foster home model on the "internaty," a Russian-Ukrainian approximation of foster homes
  • Travel for two junior Russian majors to Washington, DC, who there won free tickets to Russia in College Bowl-like competitions on speaking in Russian and Russian history and culture sponsored annually by the International Association of Teachers of Russian Language and Literature
  • Travel to Ukraine (Odessa) and Belarus (Minsk) by a rising senior and heritage speaker of Russian to find and document in photographs, films, interviews, etc. the remnants, or "ghosts," of Jewish life that had been vibrant before and shortly after the 1917 revolution, as the basis for a senior hoors thesis
  • Tutoring in preparation for Intermediate Russian for a Marine Corps veteran-student single mother to enable her to participate, with her young daughter, in the summer St. Petersburg program
  • Participation in the summer immersion program in Russian at Middlebury College by a double Russian-German major
  • Travel by an Art History major and heritage Russian speaker to intern in Moscow for the winter at the Garage Museum of Contemporary Art and Tretyakov Gallery
  • Travel by a Russian major to Moscow to participate at the Third Annual US-Russian Student Dialogue
  • Post-graduate travel to Japan by a comparative literature graduate student to give a talk at an international conference on Slavic and Eurasian Studies