The deadline for submitting your Letter of Intent to any of the streams in the Alo Grant is March 19, 2021. If your LOI is accepted you will have until June 30, 2021 to submit the full Alo Grant submission. For more information about the Alo Grant LOI, please see here

The purpose is to support innovation in the field of admissions and recruitment into professional training. The funding will be awarded to proposals that show promise in contributing to the broader admissions community. All proposals must focus on research, not development.

The streams that will be funded are as follows:

• The General Admissions Fund: Advancement of admissions-related knowledge to improve the quality of recruitment, screening, and selection in professional programs.
• The Strategic Fund: Enhance understanding related to the use of the Casper test, primarily Casper-inspired research.
• The Diversity Fund: Promotion of projects that focus on diversity and inclusion. The focus is on research that identifies and eliminates systemic barriers that impede career advancement and foster recruitment and retention of underrepresented groups in the professions.

Other curiosity-driven research topics may be considered, but priority will be given to the streams listed above.

Applications must meet current standards of professions education research. Projects will be evaluated on the relevance and potential impact to the admissions community of the research question, the appropriateness of the research methodology and analysis, the knowledge translation and dissemination, and the feasibility of successfully completing the project during the funding period. All selected projects must complete an ethical review of the proposal. Although applicants are not required to be members of an academic institution, research teams must have suitable research training to conduct the research. Short CVs submitted with the application should include details related to research or topical experience. Grant proposals may be from a single institution; however, where possible collaborative grants across institutions are encouraged.

The project duration must be between 3-12 months (for “one year projects”), or no more than 24-months in length (for “two year projects”). The start date of the project must fall between June 1, 2021 and December 31, 2021. For a more in-depth look at our compensation breakdown, please see our compensation footnotes.

The maximum available funds per applicant is $10,000 for projects up to 12-months, or $20,000 for projects up to 24-months. Applicants are encouraged to apply regardless of the duration of their project.

Grant disbursement is as follows:

40% at the time of ethics approval by the Ethics Committee from all involved institutions

• 40% at the half-way point (upon completion of the interim report)
• 20% when the study is completed and the final report is sent to Altus Assessments (the sponsor of the Alo Grant program)

Final reports must be submitted within 3 months of the study’s completion date. Applicants who are awarded funding but fail to submit a satisfactory final report by the specific deadline will not be eligible to apply for, or participate in another Alo Grant until a satisfactory final report has been submitted.

Proposal are to be submitted via the submission portal after having your LOI accepted. Applications may be uploaded as PDFs or by filling out the required fields. More information about how to prepare, and submit your application to the Alo Grant can be found on our submission platform, the link is here.

Applications to any stream in the Alo Grant will be assessed by a panel made up of Altus research professionals and external reviewers. All applicants will receive feedback on their submission, regardless of the funding decision. Timing of the feedback is dependent upon the number of submissions received annually. Each proposal will be evaluated on the following areas:

• Research question and objectives
• Methodology and analysis
• Anticipated results
• Impact of the problem
• Knowledge translation and dissemination plan
• Appropriateness of the budget

 

Funding decisions are not subject to appeal

The first step of this application is submitting a Letter of Intent (maximum 1000 words) ahead of March 19, 2021. If this LOI is accepted, you will be directed to proceed with the rest of this submission. Please submit your LOI or any additional questions to: alogrant@altus.as.

There are no standard templates you must use for your Alo Grant application. But we do have many examples of timelines, proposals and budget templates for completing your submission. You can access them all through the Alo Grant Checklist ahead of submission. You can also refer to the Applicant Support Content document while you complete your application. The PDF has additional context for each application question and provides example responses.

‍All questions about the 2021 Alo Grant can be sent to alogrant@altus.as.