Research Funding Opportunities: August 15, 2025

Communications – New Investigators

First Opportunity

• Sponsor: National Communication Association
• Funding Opportunity Title:  NCA Research Cultivation Grants 
• Key words: communications, new investigators
• Link to RFP: https://www.natcom.org/academic-professional-resources/nca-grant-opportunities/nca-research-cultivation-grants
• Agency Deadline: 09/01/25
• Funding available: Applicants may seek support up to $12,500. 
• Period of performance: Funds must be disbursed within one year of receiving the award. 
• Program background: The Research Cultivation Grant (RCG) supports NCA’s mission to “foster professional success in research.” The specific goal of the RCG is to facilitate first-time grant-seeking for those without prior grant experience and/or those desiring to build a foundation for future grant pursuits. In this sense, RCG is a grant-seeding program with both short-term and long-term promise. Funded projects will have the potential to make significant contributions to the study and practices of communication.
• Program Objectives: RCG-funded projects will be those proposing innovative research (such as understudied domains, novel or creative methodologies), promoting IDEA as defined by NCA’s strategic plan (focused on historically marginalized groups), and/or engaged scholarship (such as research mobilized in non-academic contexts of pressing social, civic, and ethical concerns, or that translates communication theory into practice).
• NOTE:
  • All investigators listed on the grant must be NCA members at the time of submission.
  • Project investigators must have no prior research grant funding since completion of the terminal degree. Applicants are required to hold a terminal degree.
  • NCA will pay up to 10 percent of indirect costs, but the total funding amount, including both direct and indirect costs, cannot exceed the $12,500 funding limit.
  • Funds are disbursed to identified university fiscal agents, not to individuals

Second Opportunity

• Sponsor: National Communication Association
• Funding Opportunity Title:  NCA 2025 President’s Leading with Imagination and Forward-thinking (L.I.F.T.) grant
• Key words: communications, mis/disinformation, censorship, inclusion
• Link to RFP: https://www.natcom.org/nca-2025-presidents-l-i-f-t-grant/
• Agency Deadline: 09/01/25
• Funding available: Applicants may seek support up to $10,000. 
• Period of performance: Funds must be disbursed within one year of receiving the award. 
• Program background: In partnership with NCA’s Research Council, the NCA 2025 President’s Leading with Imagination and Forward-thinking (L.I.F.T.) grant supports NCA’s vision of “Transforming Lives through Communication” and NCA’s mission to advance “Communication scholarship, teaching, and practice to foster a better world.”
• Program Objectives: The specific goals of the L.I.F.T. Grant are to support NCA members who seek to imagine, re-imagine, and/or be forward-thinking in their pursuit of communication scholarship. The L.I.F.T. grant priorities are related to the 2025 Executive Committee’s strategic priorities and commitment to proactively support NCA’s mission and NCA members. The L.I.F.T. grant priorities include: threats to re-imagining inclusion; threats to re-imagining what it means to think local and global; threats to communication ethics in an age of mis/disinformation; threats to I.D.E.A.; threats to academic freedom; threats to disenfranchised or marginalized groups; censorship due to the political or ideological content of the work; and other issues outlined in the criteria for evaluation explicated below. Funded projects should share a clear rationale for how the submission meets the criteria of L.I.F.T. grants and makes significant contributions to the study and practice of communication.
• NOTE:
  • All investigators listed on the grant must be NCA members at the time of submission.
  • Projects must engage one or more of the specific L.I.F.T. goals outlined in the Call: (1) imagine; (3) re-imagine; and/or (3) be forward-thinking. The specific L.I.F.T. goal(s) must be stated up front in the first paragraph of the proposal.
  • Projects must clearly pursue communication scholarship related to one or more of the L.I.F.T. grant priorities outlined in the Call and in the eligibility criteria below. One or more L.I.F.T. priorities must be stated up front in the first paragraph of the proposal.
  • NCA will pay up to 10 percent of indirect costs, but the total funding amount, including both direct and indirect costs, cannot exceed the $10,000 funding limit.
  • Funds are disbursed to identified university fiscal agents, not to individuals

Third Opportunity

• Sponsor: National Communication Association
• Funding Opportunity Title:  The Communication Pedagogy Grant (CPG)
• Key words: communications, Communication-related scholarship, pedagogy, service
• Link to RFP: https://www.natcom.org/communication-pedagogy-grant/
• Agency Deadline: 09/01/25
• Funding available: Applicants may seek support up to $15,000. 
• Period of performance: Funds must be disbursed within one year of receiving the award. 
• Program background: The NCA’s Teaching and Learning Council supports and promotes disciplinary pedagogy. The Communication Pedagogy Grant (CPG) envisions a space for communication educators to explore innovative pedagogical practices, assessment design, and learning environments. The CPG will fund proposals that are most likely to (a) have a long-term impact on faculty, students, or community environments through the development of learning opportunities; (b) that support, challenge, experiment with, and/or advocate for impactful and enduring change in marginalized spaces inside or outside the classroom, such as (but not limited to) grants that foster critical thinking and deliberative engagement with social discourses; and (c) that support exploration of transferable instructional communication methodologies, practices, content, or models, that if adopted by others will create a meaningful teaching experience.
• Program Objectives: The CPG seeks to benefit instructors at any career stage and to address a gap in pedagogical funding to support:
  • instructors who seek to translate research findings into practice related to instructional communication methodologies, practices, models, or variables (immediacy, clarity, teacher authenticity, etc.);
  • instructors who seek to explore innovative instructional communication pedagogical methodologies, practices or models focusing on inclusivity;
  • instructors who seek to explore innovative instructional communication pedagogical methodologies, practices, or models to teach fundamental communication theories and concepts; and
  • creation of pedagogical materials that could be used by others.
• NOTE:
  • Applicants do not need to be a member of NCA at the time of application, but recipients must become a member for the duration of their funding (PI can use grant amount to fund membership).
  • Priority will be given to applications for which institutional funding is not available.
  • Anyone employed full or part-time as an instructor of communication at any level (e.g., K-12, community college, undergraduate and/or graduate) is welcome to apply. We particularly invite individuals from community colleges, K-12 institutions, under-represented, small/regional/less-funded and minority institutions and/or marginalized positionalities.
  • NCA will pay up to 10 percent of indirect costs, but the total funding amount, including both direct and indirect costs, cannot exceed the $10,000 funding limit.
  • Funds are disbursed to identified university fiscal agents, not to individuals

Fourth Opportunity

• Sponsor: National Communication Association
• Funding Opportunity Title:  Advancing the Discipline Grants
• Key words: communications, academic disciplinary research
• Link to RFP: https://www.natcom.org/advancing-the-discipline-grants/
• Agency Deadline: 09/01/25
• Funding available: Applicants may seek support up to $5,000. 
• Period of performance: Funds must be disbursed within one year of receiving the award. 
• Program background: NCA funds projects and events that advance the discipline of Communication. While there are many funding outlets for Communication scholars to seek support for academic disciplinary research, NCA is uniquely positioned to support work that is focused on the discipline itself.
• Program Objectives: All funded activities must align with the goals of NCA’s strategic plan and have widespread impact that reaches beyond a single department, campus, or NCA unit.
• NOTE:
  • All investigators listed on the grant must be NCA members at the time of submission.
  • Travel, equipment, and other funding categories will only be allocated for items that are in direct support of the proposed project or event. Examples of things that are not eligible for funding under these terms are attendance at NCA’s Annual Convention and purchase of office computers. Funds may not be used to augment the budget of NCA convention-related activity.
  • Individual research projects will not be considered for funding.
  • NCA will pay up to 10 percent of indirect costs, but the total funding amount, including both direct and indirect costs, cannot exceed the $10,000 funding limit.
  • Funds are disbursed to identified university fiscal agents, not to individuals

Category: STEM Education

First Opportunity

• Sponsor: National Science Foundation
• Funding Opportunity Title: NSF 21-588: EDU Core Research (ECR:Core)
• Key words: STEM Learning and Learning Environments, Broadening Participation in STEM, STEM Workforce Development
• Link to RFP:  https://www.nsf.gov/funding/opportunities/ecrcore-edu-core-research/nsf21-588/solicitation
• Deadline: Deadline to complete the survey is 9/1/25, internal submission deadline is 10/02/25
• Funding available:  (1) Level I proposals may request up to $500,000; (2) Level II proposals may request up to $1,500,000; (3) Level III proposals may request up to $2,500,000. 
• Period of performance: proposals may request a duration of 3 to 5 years
• Program Background: The EDU Core Research (ECR) program offers this ECR:Core solicitation and invites proposals for fundamental research (curiosity-driven basic research and use-inspired basic research) that contributes to the general, explanatory knowledge that underlies STEM education in one or more of the three broadly conceived Research Areas: Research on STEM Learning and Learning Environments, Research on Broadening Participation in STEM fields, and Research on STEM Workforce Development. Within this framework, the ECR program supports a wide range of fundamental STEM education research activities, aimed at learners of all groups and ages in formal and informal settings.
• Program Objective: The ECR:Core solicitation invites proposals with a wide range of disciplinary perspectives and welcomes fundamental research proposals across the three research areas. Proposals submitted to ECR:Core often fall into one or more of the following research topic clusters. This list of research topic clusters is neither exhaustive nor mutually exclusive, and the program is open to other topic clusters that advance fundamental knowledge across the three research areas.
  • Broadening participation in STEM education and the STEM workforce as defined by NSF’s statutory mission.
  • Cognitive and neural underpinnings of STEM learning.
  • Discipline-based education research in STEM fields.
  • Factors at the institutional, structural, organizational, societal, and systemic levels that affect STEM teaching, learning, and participation in STEM education and the workforce.
  • Factors at the cultural, affective, psychological, and demographic levels that affect STEM teaching, learning, and participation in STEM education and the workforce.
  • Research on technology-enabled learning.
  • Studies of the diffusion of knowledge and research on the translation and implementation of advances in STEM education and workforce development.
  • Advances in methodology, measurement, and assessment in STEM education and workforce development research.
  • Policy research and research that builds on and expands the theoretical foundations for evaluating STEM education and workforce development initiatives.
  • Other topics that involve fundamental research in STEM learning and learning environments, broadening participation in STEM, and STEM workforce development.

Category: Research Funding Opportunities
Tagged: Broadening Participation in STEM Censorship Communication-related scholarship communications Inclusion mis/disinformation new investigators pedagogy STEM Learning and Learning Environments STEM Workforce Development
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