Conferences
Limited funds are available to students traveling to conferences to give papers or to attend professional development or networking conferences. Applications for funding are reviewed on a rolling basis. Apply using the application forms linked below. Funding for research or fieldwork is available from the Graduate School: https://www.umass.edu/graduate/funding/internal-funding. The Eastern Economic Association (EEA) holds its annual conference each spring. A limited number of EEA travel grants are available from the department. Applications for EEA grants are applied for, and reviewed, separately from other conference travel grants. See below.
Travel Registration
All overseas, all domestic overnight, all same-day out-of-state travel on University business needs to be pre-registered in Concur:
See this President’s Office website for instructions:
Link to President's Office website
Do not try to book travel (i.e., don’t buy airline tickets or reserve hotel rooms) in Concur.
You will register your travel in 2 or 3 steps. The President’s Office wants you to do this at least 3 weeks before you travel:
1. Only for international travel, complete an International Pre-Travel Export Control and Risk Form.
2. Create a pre-travel authorization request in Concur. If required, attach the completed Export Control and Risk form to the Concur request. The Graduate Program Manager (GPM) can do this on your behalf (as your delegate) if you give him your travel information and, if required, your Export Control and Risk form.
3. After your Concur pre-travel request is approved, register your travel by sending an email to Healix.com. Healix needs a booking confirmation. Follow the instructions on the President's Office website. If you don’t have a booking confirmation, get in touch with the GPM for a work-around. The GPM can do this step for you.
Conference Travel Grant Application
Applications for conference travel funding will be accepted on a rolling basis.
Current UMass Economics graduate students may apply for a Conference Travel Grant by completing the Google form here:
Application for Conference Travel Grant
Guidelines
1. The Graduate School offers grants to fund pre-dissertation research, dissertation research, and dissertation fieldwork. The department will no longer fund research travel. Students interested in research funding may find more information at https://www.umass.edu/graduate/funding/internal-funding.
2. The department will only fund attendance at conferences where students are presenting or at professional development conferences where papers are not presented.
3. Students will be eligible for travel funds between their third and sixth years. Exceptional requests for funds before the third year, or after the sixth year, will be evaluated based on letters from the student and advisor attesting to the importance of the specific trip to the student’s graduate career at that particular time.
4. The department will enforce an annual limit of $1,000 (July 1 to June 30) and a lifetime limit of $3,000 per person. Conferences that start before June 30 and end after July 1, i.e., conferences that fall in two years, will be treated as falling entirely in the later year.
5. Funding received prior to August 2019 will not count against students' annual or lifetime limits
6. Travel grants will be disbursed as reimbursements of travel expenses after the conference has taken place. Eligible expenses include conference registration, travel, lodging, and meals.
EEA Conference Travel Grant Application
The Eastern Economic Association holds its annual conference each spring. Students may apply for a limited number of grants (normally $400) with preference given to presenters, discussants, chairs, and registrants, in that order. Presenters, discussants, and chairs (not registrants) may, if they wish, apply to use their annual conference travel grant allowance (subject to the $1000 annual/$3000 lifetime limits) to cover expenses in excess of $400. The $400 Easterns grant is not included in the annual and lifetime limits. More information about the EEA and its conference may be found here: https://www.ramapo.edu/eea/
Current UMass Economics graduate students may apply for an EEA Conference grant by submitting this Google form by February 19:
Workshop Grant Application
Students interested in attending on-campus workshops relevant to their work, in particular the methodology workshops sponsored by the Institute for Social Science Research (ISSR), may apply to the department for reimbursement of the registration fee.
Workshop funds are included in the annual and lifetime limits for Conference and Workshop Funding.
Students may find information on ISSR workshops here: https://www.umass.edu/issr/all-workshops
UMass Economics graduate students who would like to apply for workshop funding should complete this Google form:
at least two weeks before the workshop is scheduled to begin. Applications will be accepted on a rolling basis until funds run out. Students will be limited to reimbursements for one workshop per session (fall, winter, spring, summer).