Conference Support Bursary for Higher Education, Teaching, and Learning conferences

[2020] Current round of bursary is closed. Future funding unknown. New applications are currently closed.  New finding opportunities are likely to come through CELPiE.

This bursary is intended to promote and support staff presenting higher education, teaching and learning related activities at national and international conferences. The bursary is funded through the St Andrews Learning and Teaching Initiative (SALTI) and managed cooperatively by SALTI, CHER and CAPOD.

Amount of the Bursary: Up to £500, which can be used to cover some proportion of registration fees, accommodation, and travel.  Applications can be made at any time. Once the budget for the current year is spent, no more bursaries will be offered.

Eligibility:

  1. Applicants should be St Andrews staff members at the time of application and at the time of the conference.
  2. Staff categories eligible include academic staff on teaching and research contracts; and education-focused academic staff.
  3. In addition, professional staff, PhD students, or staff on research-only contracts are eligible if they are formally presenting research done in collaboration with eligible academic staff listed above.
  4. The applicant should generally be presenting at the conference unless a clear case can be made that attendance will benefit the University in terms of higher education, teaching and learning related activities.
  5. The bursary application needs to be approved prior to the conference dates. They cannot be awarded retrospectively.
  6. The conference must be organised at a national level (e.g., Scotland, UK) or international, even if the conference is held locally.
  7. Each person can only apply and claim once in a given financial year.

There is no formal deadline for these applications as they are intended to be responsive to need.  However, in order for the bursary to be considered for approval prior to the conference date, the application should be received at least 3 weeks prior to the dates of the conference.  Applications can be made well in advance of the conference, but the funding must be able to be resolved in the relevant financial year of the advertised bursary (i.e. for things like the conference fees and travel, and the conference must be within the same calendar year (that is, you can pay for a conference up till end of December following the end of the relevant financial year, as long as the payments themselves are all resolved by the end of the financial year).

Reporting:

  1. Successful applicants would complete a short reporting form on return from the conference to sign off on the actual attendance, with a copy of the relevant page of the academic program showing their presentation.
  2. The successful applicant are expected to write a short (250-500 word) blog post on their conference experience that would be published on the CHER (and/or SALTI) websites. The report to include:

Conference title:
General themes of the conference:
Title and feedback on my presentation:
Interesting presentations attended:
Possible future directions:
Some graphical material is also appropriate (images of the conference venue, keynotes, poster session etc. in a form that can be put online).

  1. We also encourage applicants who are Twitter users, to tweet experiences from their attendance.

Applications can be made using the form below:

New applications are currently closed.  New finding opportunities are likely to come through CELPiE.