VPR Discretionary Funds

All academic faculty members in permanent and probationary appointments are eligible to apply.

The proposal may fall within any of the Tri-Agency program areas.

Projects will not normally be considered if they could be funded through other internal opportunities, such as:

President’s Seed Research Grant, President’s Publication Fund, Academic Conference Fund, Carbon Capture Utilization and Storage Fund, Research Cluster Fund and Non-cluster Fund, faculty travel grants, etc.

Financial contributions from the departments, faculties, research centres and other units should be sought in conjunction with a request to this Fund.

Applications may be submitted at any time and will be reviewed by the Senior Research Team once a month. Typically, only one application per fiscal year will be permitted.

Application forms with further instructions are available here :

• VPR Discretionary Funds - Guidelines (Pdf) 
• VPR Discretionary Funds - Application Form (Doc)
• VPR Discretionary Funds - Application for Matching Funds (Doc) 

All expenses must be essential for the activities being proposed. These can include support for research personnel (wherever possible, students should be retained as research assistants), travel, specialized research supplies, equipment or software, dissemination, data sets, honoraria for research participants, patent costs & associated legal fees.

Generally, funds will NOT be granted for non-specialized computer hardware or software, office supplies and equipment, training or completing degree requirements, course releases, activities undertaken prior to application to the fund, or activities that can be supported through other internal funding opportunities as noted above.

Financial contributions from departments, faculties, research centres and other units should also be sought.

Although no maximum size of grant is identified, applicants are advised to keep their budgets reasonable. It is expected that most awards will be less than $25,000.

The adjudication committee may also set other maximum limits for funding projects as deemed necessary. Ineligible budget items will be removed, and the committee may reduce an award if parts of the budget are excessive.

SSHRC or NSERC expired balance requests may request part or all of the unspent funds remaining for ongoing research related to the original grant. The request for residual funds should include an explanation of why the funds were not spent during the regular grant period.

Intellectual property evaluation or development requests should be developed in consultation with the Director, Office of Research Partnerships & Innovation.

The adjudication committee is the Senior Research Team; Vice-President (Research), Associate Vice-President (Research), Director, Office of Research Services, and Director, Office of Research Partnerships & Innovation.

• The completeness and clarity of the application
• Need for funds
• Leveraging other sources of funding
• The scholarly record of applicants
• For those who have previously obtained an internal research grant, consideration will include
• External funding sought for that project
• Potential benefit to the University
• Support from the Faculty/Department
• Availability of funds

The Office of Research Services (ORS) will notify applicants about the results of their applications. Grants will be placed in separate accounts by the ORS in the name of the recipient. Expenditures may be made only for those specific purposes authorized by the committee. All financial claims against the account (e.g., payroll, travel, purchase requisitions, etc.) must be signed for by the recipient of the award and approved by the appropriate Department or Dean.

Awards of matching funds for external grants are contingent on a successful application. If the external funding received is less than that requested, the award may be further reviewed by the committee to determine if it should be reduced.

Unused balances in research accounts will be recovered when no longer required for the original purpose or typically two years from the date that the grant was authorized. The committee may assign an expiry date beyond two years where warranted. Research accounts will be closed automatically and the funds reclaimed after two years unless a request for an extension of the grant is received and approved.

Overspending is not permitted on these accounts. Overspent accounts become the personal responsibility of the account holder.

An award may be conditionally granted pending receipt of approval from the appropriate committee where the research involves humans, animals, biohazards, radiation, etc. An applicant has six (6) months from notification of a conditional award to submit an application to the appropriate committee.

Awards will not be placed in an account until all required certifications have been obtained. For multistage projects where activities involving human participants (and/or their data) or animals will take place prior to ethics approval, a portion of funds required for non-ethics related work may be requested.

Recipients of grants will complete a report for each award and submit it to the ORS at the completion of the project or within two years of the time that a grant is authorized. These reports, which will be available on request to each committee member, are to describe the substantive results of the research for which the grant was made.

A list of funded projects and reports are posted below.