Faculty Educational Leave Proposal Guidelines

PURPOSE

The College of Arts and Letters at James Madison University offers Educational Leaves to provide faculty members with opportunities to engage in intensive professional development activities that result in enhanced research, teaching, and/or artistic skills and contribute to a renewed capacity for contributions to the College and University community. These leaves provide space for intensive study and research that enhances the ability of CAL faculty to be excellent scholars and teachers.

ELIGIBILITY

To be eligible to apply for an Educational Leave, faculty members must meet the following qualifications:

Applicants must be full-time faculty members in the College of Arts and Letters.
Applicants must occupy a renewable term appointment (RTA), a tenure-track position, or have tenure at the time of application.
Individuals applying for the first time must be in at least their third year of full-time service at James Madison University.
Past recipients of an educational leave (either from the college or their unit) must complete six full academic years of teaching before becoming eligible for another leave. Those who last received a leave in 2019-2020 or before are eligible to apply for a leave in the 2025-2026 application cycle.
Applicants may not be serving as a member of the CAL Research, Awards, and Development Committee.
Applicants must have the endorsement of their Academic Unit Head (AUH).

APPLICATION PROCEDURES

Applications for Educational Leaves must be submitted on the attached forms, directly to the faculty member’s AUH. The proposal must be reviewed and endorsed by the AUH, who should send a pdf e-mail attachment of all materials to Laura Wisman (wismanlb@jmu.edu) by Friday, September 5, 2025.

TERMS OF LEAVE

The terms of the Educational Leave enable a faculty member to elect to use one full academic year at one half salary or one semester (fall or spring) at full salary. With either option, the University contributes its full share of all established fringe benefits. If the one semester option is taken, the remaining semester of that year may not be applied to the accumulation of the six years of service required for Educational Leave eligibility. A faculty member who elects the option of one full academic year should also indicate whether a single semester is a reasonable alternative. The Research, Awards, and Development Committee can fund a leave for only one semester if it determines that the quality of proposals being considered warrants a more equitable distribution of funding.

An applicant is expected to follow through with an Educational Leave once the application is approved and the leave is awarded. If plans change, notify the chair of the Research, Awards, and Development Committee immediately. Because the selection process is highly competitive and based on comparison of your proposal to those of your peers, any changes you make can affect your status as well as that of another applicant (i.e., render a proposal more or less competitive than the original). Therefore, it is imperative that any changes are approved before the final selection process is initiated.

By accepting an Educational Leave, the recipient agrees in good faith to return to full-time service at the University for at least one academic year after the leave is completed.

Educational Leave may be withheld whenever it is felt that the absence of the candidate for leave would be seriously detrimental to the interest of the University.

REPORTS AND ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

At the completion of leave activities, a written report summarizing project accomplishments must be submitted to the Associate Dean for Research, Scholarship, and Creative Activities and academic unit head. The due dates for these reports are Friday, March 5, 2027, for fall recipients and Friday, July 9, 2027, for spring and academic year recipients. Leave recipients will be expected to provide, in reasonable detail, a summary of their activities during the leave period and discuss how the experience contributed to their scholarship, teaching effectiveness, and professional development. For projects requiring IRB or IACUC approval, grant recipients must include with the report a copy of the appropriate approval form. Failure to file this report may impede the award of future Educational Leave. When faculty members return from Educational Leave, the Dean and Academic Unit Head may invite them to share their scholarship via a lecture, seminar, presentation, workshop, artistic performance, artistic exhibition, or participation in a colloquium. Any publication or exhibition resulting from activity assisted by the leave shall indicate: “This work was supported by the James Madison University Program of Grants for Faculty Educational Leaves.”

PROPOSAL FORMAT

The CAL Research, Awards, and Development Committee will not consider proposals that do not conform to these formatting guidelines.

Project Summary

A proposal is to be directed toward independent study, research, and/or creative work that will enhance the applicant’s scholarship, teaching abilities, and/or foster professional growth and development. Include a short and descriptive project title and a one-paragraph abstract using the cover sheet provided.

Project Description

This description is the only demonstration the committee will have of the project's substance and potential. The applicant should not presume that members of the review committee have extensive or specialized knowledge of the applicant’s field. The proposal must therefore be sufficiently detailed to describe the project in nontechnical language. The following points must be addressed:

State the objectives of the leave.
Explain the project's significance to your field of study and your own scholarly development. Clearly describe the specific program of study, research, or creative work and explain the basic ideas, problems, or questions intended to be examined. Explain the planned approach.
Incorporate statements about the need for and the project's contributions to teaching, scholarship, and/or creative work in the field. Include a concise review of the relevant literature. (Attach bibliography of no more than two pages, if applicable.)
Specify where the project will be conducted and indicate the likelihood of accessing archives, collections, individuals, or institutions, if relevant.
Indicate the project’s relation to long-term scholarly, creative, or teaching objectives.

If you have previously received an Educational Leave from James Madison University, please include as an appendix a copy of the written report of project accomplishments that you submitted upon completion of your leave activities and briefly describe the significant ways in which your scholarship, creative work and/or teaching have been affected. Include a copy of the appropriate IRB or IACUC approval form, if applicable.

Length

The project description may not exceed 1,250 words; please include the word count at the end of the proposal. Bibliography is not included in the page count.

Curriculum Vitae

Applicants should attach a current curriculum vitae that conforms to the conventions of their discipline or the CAL guidelines. Professional credentials will be considered when reviewing proposals and when determining the applicant’s potential for successful leave activities.

GOVERNING POLICIES

The proposal must demonstrate what positive effect this leave would have on the scholarly achievement and/or teaching quality of the applicant and on the College’s and University’s academic programs.
Applicants who have never had a leave as well as those from departments without internal leave policies will receive special consideration in the review process.
The applicant must show commitment to full-time work on the project during the leave period.
If projects involve research or data collection using human subjects, the proposer must acknowledge that Institutional Review Board (IRB) approval, according to JMU policy number 1104 is required of all awarded grants. For more information see here. According to the Federal Policy for the Protection of Human Subjects, IRB approval is not required for oral history and journalism, defined as “scholarly and journalistic activities (e.g., oral history, journalism, biography, literary criticism, legal research, and historical scholarship), including the collection and use of information that focus directly on the specific individuals about whom the information is collected.”
If projects involve research or data collection using live, vertebrate animals, the proposer must acknowledge that Institutional Animal Care and Use Committee (IACUC) approval, according to JMU policy number 2202, is required of all awarded grants. For more information see here.
For projects that require but have not yet received IRB or IACUC approval by the leave application deadline, the leave award is conditional on acquiring approval by the beginning of the leave period.

REVIEW CRITERIA

Significance: Describes why the project is important and how it advances knowledge and/or meets a need in a way that is accessible and compelling to non-specialists.

Clarity and quality of the proposal: Clarity of expression and organization of the proposal.

Feasibility of the project goals and proposed plan of work: Work plan is appropriate for achieving project goals. Timeline is feasible.

Significance of the proposed project for the applicant’s broader scholarly/creative agenda: Responses address how this funding will support the project in the short term and how it will enhance applications for external grants in the long term.

Potential for growth: To what extent will the awarding of a CAL leave advance the project and the faculty member’s career trajectory?

Record of (or potential for) scholarly and creative productivity relative to rank: Evidence of a scholarly/creative agenda or high potential for scholarly/creative productivity (e.g., past funding and results; completion of projects; publications).

EVALUATION PROCESS

The CAL Research, Awards, and Development Committee, comprised of a representative from each academic unit, will consider all eligible proposals. The Associate Dean for Research, Scholarship, and Creative Activities serves as a non-voting chair. Leaves will be awarded based on the quality of the proposal with special consideration given to faculty who have never had an educational leave as well as those who come from departments without internal leave policies. The committee’s recommendations are not subject to appeal, but the committee will maintain records of its deliberations and, upon written request by an applicant, provide a summary evaluation of the applicant’s proposal after the announcement of leave recipients is made.

NOTIFICATION OF AWARD

The CAL Research, Awards, and Development Committee will forward proposals recommended for funding under the Educational Leaves Program to the Dean. The Dean will review the funds required by each department to employ part-time faculty to replace the faculty member on leave. After determining the maximum number of leaves that can be supported from the funds available, the Dean will notify the recipients of Faculty Educational Leave awards in writing by the end of the 2025 Fall Semester.