Nieves Family Foundation (NFF) Travel Grants
NFF Travel Grants are intended to support field-based, experiential learning through travel beyond southern California. Grants are intended to cover varied travel-related course expenditures, including airfare, ground transportation, lodging, meals, honoraria, admissions, supplies, and more. NFF grants are available for up to four LCs each year, subject to a competitive application process overseen by an NFF Grant Review Committee, consisting of the LC Coordinator and at least two faculty members. The maximum total course budget is $35,000. Expenses beyond this are the responsibility of the instructor. No requests for additional funding will be considered.
Before applying for the NFF Grant, interested LC faculty and students must first submit a Statement of Intent. This will allow early input for prospective travel applications and provide a sense of the number of applications for a given session. Within one week, NFF travel applicant courses must post on the LC Bulletin Board, noting the course topic and how students can apply. Although students that have already contributed to planning may expect to have a seat in pre-registration (even if their course does not receive the grant), open applications for remaining seats bring greater transparency and more diverse classes. Failure to post on the Bulletin Board and to make seats available to other interested students may result in the denial of an application.
Applications are due by 5pm on Friday, 23 October through the NFF Application Form. Late applications will not be considered. The grant process is rigorous and competitive. Applications will be assessed by the NFF Grant Review Committee, evaluated in terms of clear and reasonable budgeting, academic rigor, clear engagement with LC Learning Objectives and SUA’s mission, and with some consideration given to a balance of topics/regions. The NFF Grant Review Committee will provide notices of acceptance, revisions and resubmission, or rejection to the instructor within five days of the original submission. Although there may be up to four NFF Grants, there could be fewer depending on the number and quality of applications.
The Application Form will require the name of the faculty member, course title, proposed location(s), rationale (why is travel necessary/preferable?), and how the course will proceed without a travel grant. The form also requires applicants to link their proposed class to the LC Learning Objectives (they may write ‘see PDF’ if this is included in a single PDF application document, to avoid extra work). The form also requires the name and student ID numbers of 11 students and 1-3 waitlisted students. Please ensure that students are aware that if they are associated with multiple LCs, they will be dropped, and if they have holds on their accounts, they will be dropped (including waitlists). Applicants must then upload a draft syllabus and budget.
Draft syllabi should contain learning objectives, course policies, core themes, readings, safety plan, and a proposed itinerary. LCs may only spend a total of 12 days off campus, including travel. While it is not expected that meetings will be confirmed before receiving the grant, some sense of expected activities and meetings is required. Preference will be given to applications with detailed, realistic schedules, and activities that speak to course objectives. Potential activities include interviewing experts; meeting community and professional organizations; visiting important historical sites or knowledge areas such as universities, museums, archives, and laboratories; cultural immersion and ethnographic observation. We want applications that provide a sense of advance logistical work, reassuring the Committee that this will be a successful and rigorous LC. The syllabus must include a safety plan, listing emergency contact information, noting the instructor’s suitability for travel (experience, language fluency), and discuss local health information (immunizations, hospital locations, etc). Faculty must ensure that students have health insurance that will cover the destination sites (note that international students are no longer required to subscribe to SUA-issued insurance). The syllabus should also discuss student visa arrangements.
Budgets must be highly detailed. For airfare, it is insufficient to list the price of one single fare from a travel website. Rather, evidence such as screenshots should be provided for the entire class, especially with estimates provided by group booking offices and including potential baggage fees, providing a clear sense of this major budget expense. For lodging, classes may consider hotels, hostels, AirBNB, and Booking.com. To help make for accurate budget estimates, courses could consider booking refundable lodging early on. Per diem and incidental expenses should be clearly explained based on local rates. Budgets should also include prospective visa and vaccination costs, ground transportation, and other outlays.
Successful NFF Travel Grant recipients should collect accurate passport information for all participants using the Group Travel Template (all passports must expire at least six months after the day of arrival in the destination), and confirm with the LC Coordinator that all passports have been seen and are valid. Trip waivers, evidence of progress in terms of visas and vaccinations, and revisions to the budget and syllabus required by the NFF Grant Committee should be provided to the LC Coordinator within one week, and must be submitted before travel booking can commence.
Click here for a sample proposal from a previous NFF-funded class. Please do not take this as a strict model, as policies change, topics vary, and conditions vary by country.