The Rising S.T.A.R. Travel Grant

The Rising Scholarly Travel Activity and Research (S.T.A.R.) Grant program has been established by the Student Government to promote and enhance the efforts undertaken by the department and colleges to send students to programs, conferences, and activities of a scholarly nature. We have benchmarked the number of students participating in this kind of activity and we hope, with the help of the S.T.A.R. grant, to see a sizeable increase in the number of students participating in research-related conferences.

Our mission with this grant is to promote student scholarly activity, and we wish to be a partner in this process. As such, we have established some criteria and specific instructions.

Criteria for award:

• Must be used for travel associated with scholarly research or creative activity, both domestic and international.
• Must be attended by Texas State students, preferences will be given to conferences attended by Texas State students where the students are presenting for said activity.
• Cannot be used to pay for the cost of faculty, staff, or other university employees, excluding student workers.
• Application must have support from a faculty member of the sponsoring college or department.
• Must have matching funds from the sponsoring college or department.

Process for award:

• Submit the application for approval with all information requested.
• At the end of each month, the Finance Commission members will review applications outside of weekly meetings each time an application is submitted and will provide decisions during Commission meetings on Mondays.
• You will receive notification of your application status by the last Monday of each month.
• Each college is designated a specific amount of funds available to request, which is spread equally among the eight academic colleges, excluding the Graduate College. If funds are not requested or used by the second deadline, Student Government will assess if a redistribution of funds is needed based on activity from the colleges.
• Each application may be awarded up to $750; however, awards will not exceed the total matching funds from any one other source, and exceptions will be given to exceptional circumstances as determined by Student Government.
• Funds will not be deposited directly in the awarded accounts, but the account information will be provided to the awarded for use by the sponsoring department Travel Assistant.
• A post-travel report must be submitted within 20 days after the activity date has passed. The report must include a summary of your experience, information about the conference and your presentation, and if possible, photos from the conference.
• Please complete all required sections of this form.

For questions concerning the process and criteria for this grant, please call the Student Government office at 512.245.1274. For questions concerning account management and the application of approved funds, please contact your department or college's Travel Assistant.