OPRE Grant Announcement
The Office of Planning, Research and Evaluation (OPRE) in the Administration for Children and Families, U.S. Department of Health and Human Services has recently published a discretionary research funding announcement titled “Early Care and Education Research Scholars: Head Start Graduate Student Research Grants,” which is summarized below. If you have questions regarding this grant announcement, please email the OPRE grant review team atHSGraduateResearchReviews@icfi.com or call 1-877-350-5913.
Head Start Graduate Student Research Grant
The full announcement for “Early Care and Education Research Scholars: Head Start Graduate Student Research Grants” is available online at: http://www.acf.hhs.gov/grants/open/foa/view/HHS-2013-ACF-OPRE-YR-0573. These grants are meant to facilitate high quality research that directly addresses the needs of low-income children, families, and their early childhood educators, to inform and improve Head Start policies and practice, and to foster mentoring relationships between faculty members and high quality doctoral students.
Who is eligible to apply? Funds for Head Start Graduate Student Research Grants are available to accredited public, State-controlled, and private institutions of higher education acting on behalf of a doctoral-level graduate student.
To be eligible to administer the grant on behalf of the student, the institution must be fully accredited by one of the regional accrediting commissions recognized by the U.S. Department of Education and the Council for Higher Education Accreditation. Eligible U.S. institutions may apply on behalf of their own university faculty who will serve as Principal Investigator for an international non-U.S. citizen who is an advanced graduate student enrolled in their program. Individuals, foreign entities, and sole proprietorship organizations are not eligible to compete for, or receive, awards under this announcement. Additionally, eligible applicants must have a faculty mentor, who has a Ph.D. or equivalent in the respective field, and conducts research as a primary professional responsibility in their university/institution.
What types of research are supported? Proposed projects must address applied research questions that will inform and improve Head Start and Early Head Start policies and practice on topics of current interest. Topics of current interest for this announcement include, but are not limited to (please see announcement for further details):
· Research that will improve understanding of the needs of families from diverse backgrounds, or improve Head Start and Early Head Start programs and policies for various subpopulations;
· Family engagement and family outcomes;
· Issues related to children who are dual language learners, including children from language-minority families, and children in native language revitalization programs;
· Professional development, especially of staff working with families;
· Community engagement and collaboration;
· Health services and family health literacy;
· Transition from Head Start to Kindergarten or from Early Head Start to Head Start;
· Teacher and classroom characteristics and practices that influence children’s academic readiness;
· Leadership and management in Head Start and Early Head Start programs; and
· Efforts of federal agencies, states, territories, tribes, and localities to coordinate Head Start and Early Head Start programs with other child/family programs and how such coordination affects the services received by eligible families and children.
When is the application deadline? Letters of intent are due May 29, 2013 and applications are dueJune 28, 2013.
