At the moment, I have not been awarded any grants, external or internal, but I have concrete plans to change this. Beginning in Fall 2023, I began to explore funding opportunities for a number of projects, both personal and collaborative. The projects included: an initiative by the CECE department’s Social Justice Committee to provide training for department faculty in restorative justice by third-party organizations, a study abroad program to Japan for school of education students, travel to Turkey to continue my research on Afro-Turks, and my continuing collaboration with Dr. Xu on virtual influencers and education. To date, I have met multiple times with on campus staff to ascertain which projects are most likely to be funded, and sources of funding. After meeting with Dominick Fantacone in the Research and Sponsored Programs Office, I discovered that a NSF RITEL grant might be achievable for the virtual influencers project with Dr. Xu.
Mr. Fantacone has already started on a draft budget for the project which is available here: budget for grant. I originally intended to submit an application to meet the January 24 deadline this season, but after consultation with Mr. Fantacone I and Dr. Xu determined that it would be better to apply later before the next deadline on November 27, 2025. In the meantime, we intend to apply for an internal FRP grant, which we will use to acquire software and materials to gather some preliminary data which can be used for the NSF application.
I continue to seek opportunities for my other projects. In addition to the FRP grant, I plan to apply for an IDA grant to fund travel to conferences in the Spring and Summer. Specifically, I would like to use the IDA funds to attend this year’s Philosophy of Education Conference in Salt Late City and the Artificial Intelligence in Education conference in Recife, Brazil.