Office of Research & Scholarship

Our Mission

Our office strives to advance the educational mission of the College of Liberal Arts by providing the infrastructure that faculty, graduate students, and academic units within the College need in order to fund, conduct, and disseminate compelling and innovative research. Research by College faculty and students exemplifies our contribution to the people of Texas, to the academic community in the nation and beyond, and to the development of human knowledge in the humanities and the social sciences. Strong research is critical to the education we provide to our undergraduate and graduate students; indeed, a successful research mission is inseparable from our educational mission.

Liberal Arts Research Support Office (RSO)

To carry out our research mission, the RSO team, comprised of proposal and research administration specialists, helps CoLA faculty, graduate students, and research personnel at UT Austin with externally and internally funded research opportunities. We facilitate preparation and submission of proposals and applications, in cooperation with the Office of Sponsored Projects (OSP) and the University Development Office (UDO). We also facilitate the participation of faculty and graduate students in grant and fellowship competitions inside the University of Texas at Austin, at the state and national levels, and internationally, with a commitment to assuring compliance with all regulatory requirements. Please visit the RSO Proposal Services webpage for more information, or the Proposal Resources Wiki for additional help with proposal-specific topics.

As a service to the College, the Research Support Office circulates a Grants Digest with open opportunities that may be of interest to academic units, faculty, and graduate students in Liberal Arts. To subscribe to the Digest, please go to the UT Lists page (https://utlists.utexas.edu/sympa) and join this list: cola_grants_alert@utlists.utexas.edu.

We also offer workshops that cover RSO services, the process of submitting proposals at UT Austin, sponsor-specific application requirements (e.g., the National Science Foundation Senior PI awards and Doctoral Dissertation Research Improvement Grants), and preparing proposal budgets. Additionally, we will work with individual units on campus to hold workshops within the unit or introduce our services to the faculty and students.

Please note, we work with a large volume of proposals, which requires advance notices and a clearly outlined time frame, which can be found here.

For more information about services within the Research Support Office, please visit our RSO website, or contact our staff at CoLA Office of Research & Scholarship (LAresearch@austin.utexas.edu):

Brook Davis
Manager, Proposal Services

Sheena Moore
Grants Administrator

Lindy Aleshire
Manager, Award Services