Growth in Undergraduate Innovation, Discovery and Engagement (CSU GUIDE)

Letter of Intent Deadline: Thursday, April 16, 2026

Amount: Funding varies by track ($40,000 - $80,000). See below for more details.

About: The California State University (CSU) Chancellor’s Office is launching the GUIDE funding initiative to enhance undergraduate student engagement across the system and promote innovative, inter-campus faculty collaboration. This program is designed to foster promising one- year research, scholarly or creative activity projects that can lead directly to the preparation of a proposal for major extramural funding.

As there is a limit of three applications per campus (no more than two per track), only three applicants will be selected from Cal Poly Humboldt. To be considered, faculty must submit a letter of intent by Thursday, April 16, 2026.

Program Goals:

• Enhance Student Success: Provide meaningful, hands-on, faculty-mentored RSCA opportunities for undergraduate and graduate students.

• Foster Collaboration: Encourage multi-campus faculty teams to collaborate on shared research challenges or creative endeavors that engage undergraduate students across campuses.

• Secure External Funding: Position CSU faculty teams to successfully compete for significant external grants and contracts following the seed funding period.

• Advance Interdisciplinary Fields: In addition to supporting high-impact projects across the full range of disciplines offered within the CSU system, this program has the goal of advancing interdisciplinary collaborations.

Proposals will be accepted on three separate tracks:

• Track 1: Collaborative multi-campus. Involves two or more faculty members from different CSU campuses. The proposal should be submitted by the lead Principal Investigator’s (PI) campus (maximum award: $80,000).

• Track 2: Single campus/faculty members conducting research at their home campus (maximum award: $40,000).

• Track 3: Mid-career resilience. Specifically for mid-career faculty seeking to re-engage in or pivot their research, scholarly or creative activities (RSCA) (maximum award: $40,000)

For more details and to download the solicitation, please visit our CSU GUIDE limited competition page which can be accessed through Engagement Hub.

Eligibility: Faculty (permanent or temporary) at any CSU campus are eligible to apply. The PI must be a CSU tenured or tenure track faculty member.

Apply: Letters of intent must be submitted through InfoReady which can be accessed on Cal Poly Humboldt’s Engagement Hub.

NOTE: For questions, please contact our Pre-Award Specialists Pia Gabriel at pg12@humboldt.edu, Kaz Wegmuller at kaz.wegmuller@humboldt.edu, or Jocelyne Takatsuno at jt366@humboldt.edu