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Thesis Funding Dates
January: Crown Thesis Funding Application opens
March 1: Thesis Funding Application Due Date, including Faculty Thesis Advisor approval
Late April: Award Notifications sent via syr email
Missed Crown Thesis Funding? Check out the Academic Enhancement Award - Research Category and email aheppner@syr.edu with questions
Funding Tools
Calculate your proposed budgetary costs using the GSA calculator here.
Fund Your Thesis
How Crown Thesis Funding Works
The Honors Program supports a select number of Thesis projects with Crown Awards and Wise-Marcus 50-Year Friendship Awards. Each year we fund approximately 25 projects with up to $5,000 per project. A select number of summer projects may be eligible for an additional research support stipend of $2,500. Additionally, a distinguished Honors alumnus, Dr. Lynne Parker, sponsors the Parker Award for Women in Science, which funds a female student's Thesis project in a science field each year.
Funding can make additional research opportunities, materials, or travel available to you, helping you produce an even more impressive final project. It is a valuable professional experience: learning to create a budget and argue on behalf of your project prepares you for future grant writing and application processes.
What we fund
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- research materials, supplies and expenses
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- research travel
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- other necessary and reasonable expenses that support your research
Application Process Overview
Eligibility:
1. Eligible students include Honors juniors and seniors currently working on Thesis Projects. Occasionally, sophomores who are planning Thesis projects will also be considered
2. You must be in good standing in the Honors program
3. Your project must have been approved by your faculty Thesis Advisor
4. Students’ academic integrity and judicial records will be reviewed as part of the application process. Violations may jeopardize eligibility of the application
5. Students must disclose other sources of research funding and may not be eligible to hold two major grants for their work simultaneously. Contact the Honors Program with any questions
6. Prior grant and award recipients may apply. There is a section on the application to report on the activity of the prior grant
Please complete this document and be prepared to upload into your application: "Crown Thesis Funding Proposal"
Students considering applying for funding:
The Crown Funding Application is due by March 1st, and the Thesis Proposal is due by April 15th of your junior year.
- If you submit an application for funding, that can serve as your junior year Thesis Proposal for Honors, so you do not have to submit both proposals. However, Honors does require you to still fill out the Thesis Proposal Form and let us know that you'd like to use your funding application as your proposal.
- If you do not do this step, we will not know to apply your funding proposal to your thesis proposal, so please do both to be marked complete.
Please complete this document and be prepared to upload into your application: "Crown Thesis Funding Budget Template".
After you've crafted your proposal and budget and have your faculty thesis advisor's commitment to oversee and support your project, you will complete the final funding application.
Your faculty thesis advisor will be asked to fill out a recommendation form in support of your project. After you apply, they will receive an email prompting them to fill this out. Please remind them to be on the lookout for that email from Honors.
Their recommendation form is also due by the application deadline, so be sure to leave your mentor plenty of time to complete this step.
After You've Been Approved for Funding
When you submitted your initial budget for your application, you specified the amounts of funds and when you estimate you will use those amounts. We realize that those estimations and timing may change slightly over the course of your project.
After you have been approved by Honors for funding and are an active 'Crown Research Recipient', you will receive a communication from us prompting you to submit an updated budget that includes more precise information regarding when you will need your funds disbursed, and in what amounts.
You will be directed to a form that collects the following:
- Details regarding your expense timing: For items that are paid directly to you (research travel costs, supplies to be purchased by you) we will review this information and disburse your funds directly to your student account according to the timeline from your updated budget.
- Details regarding any supplies or consumables that need to be purchased by a lab or faculty sponsor: For these items we will need the exact amount anticipated, and the name and contact information of the lab's budget manager, as well as a date by which we should disburse those funds. We will then transfer those funds directly to the lab.
We do not require receipts 'after the fact' that document your expenses. The use of your funds is entirely at the discretion of you and your faculty advisor.
These situations are evaluated on a case-by-case basis, and depends on the nature and scope of the change, how much your initial funding is for, and the timeline of your expense.
If your budget needs modifying, you should consult with your faculty advisor first regarding the change. If they deem it necessary for your project, you should contact your Honors Advisor who can advise you on the next steps to submit a budget amendment.
This will need to be reviewed and approved by the Honors Director, so make sure you anticipate this need and plan for it well before you need the adjusted amounts.
When Honors sends a 'grant authorization request form' to accounting, it must process through multiple audits and offices before the money is deposited to your student account. The payment process can take up to 3 - 4 weeks depending on the time of the year and workload in accounting.
When we issue the request to accounting, you will receive an email notification from us with the amount we requested. You should monitor your student account for a deposit for the next few weeks.
- If you have non-payroll direct deposit set up with the Bursar's office, the money will be disbursed directly to your personal bank account. To set up non-payroll direct deposit, navigate to MySlice to set that up in your student account.
- If you do not have direct deposit, the award will credit to your student account and you will need to work with financial aid to request a refund for this amount. Honors has no mechanism to assist you in this process. Once the funds leave our account, we do not control them and they must be accessed with the help of the financial office.
If your lab or advisor is purchasing supplies with a portion of your Crown Award funds, that information must be communicated to Honors via the budget update submittal process. After we notify you that your grant is approved, you will receive a communication from us where you will be asked to provide us with more details regarding this type of funding, including the exact amount anticipated, the name and contact information of the lab's budget manager, as well as a date by which we should disburse those funds. We will then initiate transfer those funds directly to the lab.
In some cases, Honors students working in labs over the summer can be supported via 'living expense stipends' of up to $2,500.00 for the summer. These stipends are typically disbursed in May each year to students who request them in their anticipated budgets.
They can be used at students' discretion to offset costs of living during the summer.
Answers to Common Questions about Thesis Funding
The Honors Program and the Office of Undergraduate Research (SOURCE) collaborate in student funding. Typically, Honors juniors and seniors applying for thesis funding are considered for the Crown Thesis Awards.
If you are a junior, your funding will be applied toward your Honors Thesis project.
Yes, we encourage that. For example, you might apply for a Clements Internship Award, or for summer research support within your department. We coordinate with many departments, particularly in the sciences and engineering, on funding opportunities.
If you receive funding from more than one source, you need to let each one know. It is not okay to accept funds from both for one project! (This would in fact be an academic integrity violation.)
We want to make sure that as many quality Thesis projects receive support as possible, so we restrict honors thesis funding to one funding round per student.
However, you are still eligible to apply for Honors funding if you have received prior research funding through the SOURCE, perhaps during your first year or sophomore year. You will be required to respond to additional questions about your previously funded project and submit a copy of the final report with the new application.
It is well worth applying, approximately 75% of our students receive funding.
Here are two key considerations:
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- Your application should be as well-written as you can make it: clear, concise, persuasive. Work with your faculty Thesis Advisor on it.
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- Make it clear in some detail what you will do with the funding, and whether you will have access to the people and resources you need. Generalities are not helpful here. Let's say you want to study some aspect of international banking in Hong Kong. That's great, but when you step off the airplane, how are you planning to pursue your research? Be sure that you can clearly articulate a strategy.
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- Download the application instructions and carefully review the guidelines for preparing your application.
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Funding applications are reviewed by a team of faculty reviewers from different schools/colleges across campus, representing a variety of disciplines. The reviewers make recommendations to the Honors Director, who makes the final decision.
Typically, applicants are notified within 6 weeks after the application deadline. Spring notifications will be sent at the end of April.
If approved, funding is not available until the start of the intended semester.
Yes - for Crown Thesis funding specifically, you have to be presenting (either oral or poster presentation) at a professional/academic conference. Conference funding can cover the incurred/anticipated expenses that include travel, accommodation and conference registration. If you just want to participate or attend a conference and want help with that, you should consider applying for an Honors Academic Enhancement Award to support your participation in a professional conference.
Yes. If you are staying in Syracuse over the summer to work on your project, you can include a summer stipend in your budget. For other locations, you need to give us your best estimate. Keep it modest, please! For foreign travel, try to find student hostels or other inexpensive lodgings.
You can make some adjustments to your budget if your Thesis faculty advisor approves the change. Any changes to your project that impact your budget need your thesis advisor's approval, and you should notify Honors that you need to submit an updated budget.
In rare cases you can, but you need to submit a full application with a compelling rationale for why the activity was crucial to your project.
Include it - if you think it's a reasonable request. The reviewers sometimes recommend partial funding, so they may not fund that particular item, but still recommend you for funding for the rest of your project. They won't necessarily reject your entire application if they don't think that one specific part is worthy of funding. Seek advice from your advisor, and also from your Honors Thesis Coordinator.
At this time, funding cannot be used for tuition, credits, or for study abroad or program fees. For example, let's say your Thesis examines whether there are eco-tourism programs that do an admirable job of building a durable infrastructure for Indigenous peoples and how those programs are financed. The Honors Program would not fund you to just attend a summer eco-tourism program in, say, Costa Rica, no matter how interesting it would be. We might, however, fund you to remain in Costa Rica for a few weeks after such a program to do research specifically about your topic as exemplified by local Costa Rican eco-tourism programs. You could apply for food and lodging and reasonable expenses during that period. This approach has led to very successful Thesis projects.
Crown Research Funds may also never be used to support academic payroll. Our research grants are designed to support students doing research, and by definition and per University policy, we cannot require work in exchange for your funding. If you need options to offset living costs while you do your research, you will need to request a research 'stipend' for that amount. Again, Crown grants may not be used for academic payroll.