CONFERENCE TRAVEL GRANTS (CTG)

Eligible Applicants:

• All current Northwestern University undergraduates (including SPS students working towards completion of an undergraduate degree) with the exception of NU-Q students, who have their own similar program
• Students are eligible for more than one Conference Travel Grant
• Seniors who were accepted to present prior to the grant closure deadline, even if the event itself occurs after graduation

Ineligible Applicants:

• Undergraduates at other institutions
• Northwestern students in advanced degree programs (including students who are in BS/MS programs who have completed the undergraduate degree requirements)
• Students applying for retroactive funding to cover a conference they previously attended

While the research may have been group in nature, you must be the primary presenter in order to be eligible to apply. Only one student will be supported for each presentation.  For example, grants may not be used to fund multiple students jointly presenting a poster or for a group performance.

NU-Q has begun their own, separate program to fund conference travel.  Since travel to conferences from Doha is inherently more expensive, their program will be able to provide more support than the upper limits of our Conference Travel Grant ($500).  Please reach out to the Research Administration Office at NU-Q to learn more:  research@qatar.northwestern.edu.

You must apply to, and be selected for, presentation at a conference prior to applying for conference travel grant funding.

Presenting at a professional conference is a significant achievement as an undergraduate. It demonstrates your ability to communicate a complex topic with a broad audience, and it validates the impact of your work within your field of study. Regardless of what career path you choose to pursue post-graduation, attending a conference demonstrates both written and oral communication skills to employers. Additionally, conference attendance can be leveraged to help build your professional network. Many conferences have Exhibition Halls that include booths from companies in the industry, and/or the conference may have a Graduate School Fair. If you are seeking to attend graduate school and work with a particular faculty member, it could also be a good idea to attend their presentation,  and/or meet with current graduate students who work with that faculty member.

The best way to find a conference is to first talk to your research sponsor and ask about conferences in your field and which ones they often attend themselves.  One particular challenge many undergraduates face is that conference applications are often due many months before the conference takes place, so you need to proactively think about this goal. It can help to share this goal with your research sponsor early so they can help you 1) work towards achieving this goal and 2) help you identify the right conferences and timelines that suit your needs.

Many conferences are sponsored by field-specific professional organizations, but there are undergraduate specific conferences* (see * below), too. The networking opportunities and goals of these two different kinds of conferences vary significantly, but they can both be very meaningful experiences. It could be beneficial to try and attend more than one kind of conference. The Office of Undergraduate Research does not keep an ongoing list because students attend such a wide variety of conferences (and the titles of the conferences often change from year-to-year!). Although this is by no means comprehensive, every year we have students attend conferences sponsored by:

• Chicago Area Undergraduate Research Symposium* (apps due late winter)
• National Conference on Undergraduate Research* (apps due in fall)
• National Collegiate Research Conference* (apps due in fall)
• Richard Macksey National Undergraduate Humanities Research Symposium* (apps due in January)
• Annual Biomedical Research Conference for Minority Students* (apps due end of summer)
• Society for Advancement of Chicanos/Hispanics and Native Americans in Science (apps due end of summer)
• Association for Computing Machinery
• African Studies Association
• American Alliance for Theatre and Education
• American Association for the Advancement of Science
• American Astronomical Society
• American Chemical Society
• American Educational Research Association
• American Geophysical Union
• American Institute of Chemical Engineers
• American Society for Microbiology
• American Society for Nutrition
• Association for Computational Linguistics
• Association for Psychological Science
• Association for the Study of Higher Education
• Biomedical Engineering Society
• Human Biology Association
• Institute for Operations Research and Management Science
• Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers
• Linguistics Society of America
• Middle East Studies Association
• Native American and Indigenous Studies Association
• Society for Affective Science
• Society for Neuroscience
• Society for Personality and Social Psychology
• International Society for Optics and Photonics

You must apply to, and be selected for, presentation at a conference prior to applying for conference travel grant funding. CTGs cannot reimburse you for expenses for a conference you already attended.

Applications for many conferences will require an abstract submission, which summarizes the work you plan to present. A good abstract will be a short description of the main elements of your research or creative project. Conference attendees will use your abstract to decide whether they want to take the time to listen to your presentation.  The abstract should be short and written in a simple, concise, informative, and inviting style. You want to convey both your credibility and your passion for the project. All conferences have their own abstract guidelines (such as word or character count, intended audience, etc.), so you should always defer to their specific requirements when applying to a conference. Failure to comply could result in not being selected to present. A good abstract will include these key elements.

• Motivation: Why do we care about the problem and the results? Why is it important/significant/interesting? What problem does the work attempt to solve, or what intellectual or theoretical gap does it aim to fill?
• Problem statement: What problem are you trying to solve? What is the scope of your work (a generalized approach, or for a specific situation)? Be careful not to use too much jargon. 
• Approach: How did you go about solving or making progress on the problem? What did you do, and how? What is the scope of the project? What models or specific approaches did you use? What sources of evidence did you rely on?
• Results: What’s the answer? What did you find/learn/conclude? An abstract of a scientific project may include specific data. Other abstracts may discuss the findings in a more general way.
• Conclusions: What are the implications of your answer? What does it mean, and how does it relate to what else is known? How does this work add to the existing body of knowledge? What are the implications for the problem/issue identified in part 1?

Here is an abstract template for the Northwestern Undergraduate Research Expo. Again, defer to specific conference requirements as you complete the application process – our template is a general guide. 

Important Tips

• Think about who the audience will be. Look to see who commonly attends the conference you selected.
• Proofread your abstract. If you are accepted to present your work, the abstract you submit will be published in a printed program.
• Unless the conference explicitly asks for them, avoid parenthetical citations and footnotes. Short abstracts do not typically include references, a Works Cited list, or footnotes.

Please visit Creating a Budget for specific guidelines. For in person conferences, students often underbudget their expenses because they do not think holistically about logistics and expenses beyond conference fees. The template can be useful for drafting up your responses, but you will ultimately insert these as line items into the budget section of the application (which includes a space to describe your rationale for each expense).

Here are some conference-specific budget considerations we encourage you to think through:

• Conference fees
• Poster printing costs (Ask about poster printing in your department, or consider using the Mudd Library Plotter Printer.)
• Transportation (If you are flying, do not forget about transportation to/from the airport, or within the city itself. If you are driving, consider parking fees or gas reimbursement.)
• Housing (if housing is not provided by the conference, the conference website often includes links for hotel block discounts, local dorms, and potentially ways to find a roommate.)
• Food (ask for a reasonable per diem, subtracting out meals that are covered by conference attendance fees)

You won’t write a traditional research grant proposal to apply. You won’t turn in receipts or a report at the end. 

Application Basics

To apply you’ll provide:

• Basic demographic information, such as your major and graduation date
• Information on the conference (title, location, dates)
• “Proposal upload” (single PDF upload only) that includes:
  • An abstract of your presentation/submission (your name must appear on it)
  • Proof of acceptance to present at the conference (ie screenshots from emails)
  • Information about the conference’s standing in your field of study
• A budget (with a brief explanation for each line item used)
  • Project expenditures across categories such as: conference fees, airfare, local travel, accommodations/lodging, and food
  • The form fields in the application will sum your total expenses for you. However, since this grant can only cover 50% of expenses up to $500, there will be a box for you to describe how you will fund the other 50% of expenses.

You cannot apply for conference travel funding until you receive acceptance from the conference/event.

Funding the Other 50% of Expenses

This grant is only for 50% of your total expenses. You’ll need to find money for the other half. WCAS students can apply for the WCAS conference grant.  SESP students could apply to the Hess Fund. After you receive this grant and if you receive financial aid and currently have a Northwestern scholarship, you might be eligible for additional funding to support this conference travel.  If you need emergency help to fund this travel, please review the Emergency Aid Request that is available through the financial aid office.  You can use the same document that you upload for this grant as your documentation. Students from other schools could reach out to their undergraduate dean and/or their major department to see if additional funding is available.

• To apply, please login to https://soap.northwestern.edu 
• Click on “Discover Opportunities & Apply”
• Apply for the Conference Travel Grant!

Faculty mentors can give you awesome ideas about where to present your work! Your faculty sponsor is not required to attend the conference with you, but they will provide an endorsement of your application. You may have a faculty sponsor from another academic institution, but you must request a guest sponsorship from the Office of Undergraduate Research prior to application submission; please provide us the name of the faculty mentor, their email address, and the name of their academic institution. Graduate students or post-docs may not serve as faculty sponsors.

• Your faculty sponsor/advisor must submit an online endorsement as soon as possible after you submit. Unendorsed projects will not be considered. 
• The faculty endorsement consists of the following prompt: Please offer you opinion on the quality of the conference itself and the specific opportunity it affords your student.

Complete applications, including budget and faculty endorsement, are reviewed internally at the Office of Undergraduate Research (as opposed to committee review).

Decisions are made quickly (within about a week). You have an excellent chance of being awarded this grant.

Once you return from your conference, there is a brief but mandatory survey to close out your grant. The survey will ask about your presentation experience, so we can better advise other students and help promote conference travel in the future.

The new application portal will help prompt you with steps to complete the payroll process, including a place to upload documents, if necessary.

Please see Info for Grant Winners for additional information.

Yes! We would love for you to present again at the Undergraduate Research and Arts Exposition which occurs at the end of May. You might also consider additional opportunities to share your work through the Chicago Area Undergraduate Research Symposium and Northwestern Undergraduate Research Journal.