UNIVERSITY PARK, Pa. — The Criminal Justice Research Center at Penn State (CJRC) is accepting applications to its 2021 Seed Grant Program that support the development of high-quality criminal justice research at the University.

CJRC has for many years offered annual seed funding that allows Penn State faculty to pursue external funding by buying out an investigator’s time, supporting project-specific research meetings or workshops, providing research personnel support, collecting pilot data, and other research-related activities in the areas of criminal justice and criminology.

As in previous years, CJRC’s regular seed grant program will offer faculty members up to $7,500 in funding. Additional support from the Penn State Social Science Research Institute in 2021 also allows CJRC to offer an Enhanced Seed Grant program with awards of up to $20,000.

Seed funds provided through both programs are intended to support the development of innovative research projects that demonstrate a high potential for external funding; create agency partnerships; support project meetings or workshops (including travel); cover graduate and undergraduate research assistants’ time; pay outside consultants; and/or support small pilot studies. Funds awarded through both programs are not intended to cover general expenditures typically made by departments and colleges (e.g., travel to professional conferences), programs and services without a research or evaluation component, or students’ master’s thesis or doctoral dissertation research (CJRC has a separate funding stream for graduate research support and undergraduate wages).

Successful proposals must make a clear contribution to a criminal justice domain and must demonstrate potential for progress toward external funding. Priority will be given to proposals that provide new ideas that are directly relevant to one or more of the four CJRC thematic research areas: Courts and Sentencing, Corrections and Re-Entry, Treatment and Rehabilitation, and Public Safety and Crime Prevention).

Proposals for the 2021 Seed Grant Program must be submitted by Oct. 31 and proposals for the Enhanced Seed Grant Program must be submitted by Nov. 7. Submission guidelines for both proposals can be found on the CJRC website.

Interest individuals may contact CJRC Managing Director Gary Zajac at gxz3@psu.edu for additional information.