Provost's Professional Conference Support Program

The reputation of the University is enhanced when our faculty are able to share their ideas and discoveries widely with their colleagues, and sharing the good work of our faculty will bring positive outcomes for the university. To be fully engaged in our mission of intellectual enquiry and creative production, our faculty must connect with their peers around the world.  The best ideas cannot be developed or tested in isolation from the global network of knowledge.

Various UNM departments already provide travel funds to assist faculty to attend professional conferences.  However, we recognize that department and college travel funds for faculty have become more constrained and are inconsistently available. Therefore, the Office of the Provost has set aside a modest pool of funds intended to supplement limited department and college level support.

This program will provide up to $2000 per tenured or tenure-track Albuquerque campus faculty member for the purpose of travel to present a paper or results at a professional conference, or to attend an exhibition or performance of their own creative work.  Funding is limited to one award per faculty member per year.

Priority will be given to Assistant Professors for whom establishing scholarly networks is most critical. However, requests for funds will be accepted from faculty in all tenured and tenure-track ranks.

Minimum eligibility requirements:  Recipients must –

• Demonstrate that cost of planned travel exceeds all other sources of funding, including research grants, discretionary funds, and existing departmental and college travel funds.
• Be current tenure track or tenured Albuquerque campus faculty
• Be using the funds to present a scholarly paper or creative work, or otherwise systematically share results of their scholarly investigations or creative works at a professional conference. This program does not support general conference attendance. 
• Secure a sign-off from a department chair or dean authorizing the travel and attesting to the need for supplemental funding for the proposed trip. Note: The provost travel funds can used to augment existing funds, and funding from this program is intended to be the last dollar.
• Travel must otherwise meet all applicable UNM policies, and recipients must provide a college or departmental index to which the provided funds will be transferred.

In order to promote community and sharing of ideas within UNM, any faculty member whose travel is supported on this program is encouraged to present a short version of their work, or share a new insight they gained from their conference, at a UNM venue, ideally beyond the recipient’s home department.  This could include presenting at Lightning Lounge, CTL workshops, or another extra-departmental colloquium. 

Note: faculty who are writing grants for external funding should always try to include conference travel as one of their direct costs.

For inquiries please email provost@unm.edu

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Additional rounds of funding may be announced during the semester, dependent upon funding.