William T. Grant Foundation Scholars Program

Funder Deadline: Tuesday, July 1, 2025 by 12pm 

Internal Deadline: Tuesday, April 15, 2025

Funding Amount: $425,000

**This is a limited submission opportunity with each college division (for example, the Library, CAHSS, CPS, CNRS) restricted to one application. If interest exceeds allocation per division, SPF will engage division heads to make final applicant selection. Due to the limited submission of this opportunity, please let your Pre-Award Analyst know of your intent to apply no later than April 15, 2025. Interested applicants that do not meet this timeline may be excluded from this year's applicant pool. 

ABOUT: This program supports career development for promising early-career researchers, funding five-year research and mentoring plans that significantly expand researchers’ expertise in new disciplines, methods, and content areas. Applicants should have a track record of conducting high-quality research and an interest in pursuing a significant shift in their trajectories as researchers, and must be within seven years of receiving their doctoral degrees.

Proposed research plans must address questions that are relevant to policy and practice in the Foundation’s focus areas:

• Reducing Inequality: Funds research studies that aim to build, test, or increase understanding of programs, policies, or practices to reduce inequality in the academic, social, behavioral, or economic outcomes of young people ages 5–25 in the United States, along dimensions of race, ethnicity, economic standing, sexual or gender minority status, language minority status, or immigrant origins. 

• Improving the Use of Research Evidence: In this focus area, we support research on strategies focused on improving the use of research evidence in ways that benefit young people ages 5-25 in the United States. We want to know what it takes to get research used by decision-makers and what happens when research is used. We welcome letters of inquiry for studies that pursue one of these broad aims.

Please note that in the application review process, ten finalists will be invited to New York City for an interview in February 2026, where they will have the opportunity to respond to Committee members’ and external experts’ reviews. Selected scholars will be notified by the end of March 2026.

APPLY: For a detailed program description, please see the William T. Grant Foundation’s Scholars Program page. 

NOTE: If you are interested in applying or have any questions, please contact our Pre-Award Specialists Pia Gabriel at pg12@humboldt.edu, Kaz Wegmuller at jkw77@humboldt.edu, or Jocelyne Takatsuno at jt366@humboldt.edu before April 15, 2025.