Call for Proposals
AIR Research and Dissertation Grants

The proposal submission period for 2012 will close January 10, 2012

OVERVIEW FOR 2012

With support from the National Science Foundation (NSF), the National Center for Education Statistics (NCES), and the National Postsecondary Education Cooperative (NPEC), the Association for Institutional Research (AIR) operates two grant programs that support research on a wide range of issues of critical importance to U.S. higher education. The program has two separate purposes:

• NSF and NCES support grants aim to increase the number of researchers using national datasets and demonstrate the contribution that these datasets make to the national base of knowledge on higher education policy, theory, and practice.


• The NPEC funding supports grants that increase the understanding and knowledge of a specific issue area identified by NPEC. This year, the focus will be “Exploring Postsecondary Non-Degree Programs.”

• Research Grants: Faculty and practitioners are eligible for research grants of up to $40,000 for one year of independent research. (Note: These research grants are not available to students). All grant recipients must be affiliated with a U.S. postsecondary institution or relevant non-profit higher education organization. More Information


• Dissertation Grants: Doctoral students are eligible for dissertation grants of up to $20,000 for one year to support dissertation research and writing under the guidance of a faculty dissertation advisor. More Information

• Use data from one or more of the national datasets of NCES and NSF— Research topics may cover a wide range of policy- or practice-related issues. For a list of previously funded topics visit www.airweb.org/grants. Applicants must include the analysis of data from at least one NSF or NCES dataset in the project. (See NSF/NCES Datasets for more information.) Additional large-scale, nationally representative datasets may be used in conjunction with the obligatory NSF or NCES dataset.


• Address the NPEC Focus Topic: “Exploring Postsecondary Non-Degree Programs” — Proposals should focus on postsecondary non-degree programs, their role in higher education, and appropriate measures of student success and institutional effectiveness for these programs. The analyses can focus on federal, state, or regional data and does not require the use of NCES or NSF databases. Nonetheless, the results of the research should have some applicability to IPEDS data collection efforts. (See NPEC Focus Topic for more information.)

Proposals may only be submitted electronically. The deadline for proposal submission is January 10, 2012 (11:59 p.m. EST). Applicants will be notified of funding decisions by March 23, 2012. Funding will be available starting May 1, 2012. Assistance is available from the AIR grant staff at grants@airweb.org or 850-385-4155 x200.