CLACLS Faculty Awards & Opportunities
CLACLS Visioning Grants for Faculty Research Initiatives
The CLACLS Visioning Grants for Faculty Research Initiatives support innovative faculty–graduate projects that foster interdisciplinary collaboration and advance new or continuing initiatives related to Latin America, the Caribbean, and Latino communities in the United States. Funded by the Office of the Provost, the program provides up to $15,000 in seed funding to support forward-looking research, teaching, and outreach initiatives.
Visioning Grants are designed to stimulate existing collaborations among faculty and inspire new ones across disciplines, departments, and colleges. Supported projects often take the form of seminars, workshops, lecture series, conferences, or other collaborative research activities.
Proposals that involve collaboration among faculty from different disciplines or colleges, and that meaningfully incorporate graduate student participation, are strongly encouraged. While proposals may be submitted by individuals, preference is given to collaborative initiatives with the potential to inform future externally funded research, recognizing that not all areas of inquiry have equal access to external funding opportunities.
CLACLS particularly welcomes initiatives that bridge or rethink conventional boundaries within Latin American, Caribbean, and Latino Studies.
How to Apply
- Next Call: Spring 2027
Selected Visioning Grant Recipients (Recent Years)
2026
Carolina Aragón
Landscape Architecture & Regional Planning, College of Social & Behavioral Sciences
Project: Puerto Rican Power: Networking Across the Diaspora to Design Energy Resilience
Read a UMass News story about this project.
Christian D. Guzman
Civil & Environmental Engineering, Riccio College of Engineering
Project: Ecohydrology and Nature-based Solutions in the Ecuadorian Highlands
Ivon Arroyo
Manning College of Information & Computer Sciences (CICS)
Project: Culturally Responsive Latinx GenAI Learning Companions for Mathematics Education
Meghan Armstrong
Spanish & Portuguese, College of Humanities & Fine Arts
Project: The Latinx IDS Project
2025
María Luisa Di Stefano
College of Education
Project: International Symposium and Workshop: Unlocking the Opportunities of Bilingual Education in the Americas
This initiative convened scholars, practitioners, and students to advance multilingual learning, biliteracy, and educational equity. The symposium strengthened the bilingual education research network at UMass and generated meaningful engagement with the broader community.
Carolina Banks
Department of Sociology, College of Social & Behavioral Sciences
Project: Research on Students’ Immigration Status
This ongoing project examines students’ immigration status and has fostered cross-disciplinary dialogue around education, policy, and social inclusion.
2024
María Galano
Department of Psychological and Brain Sciences, College of Natural Sciences
Kiran Asher
Women, Gender, Sexuality Studies, College of Humanities & Fine Arts
Project: Transnational Approaches to Policing and Its Impact on Latinx Families in Western Massachusetts
This collaborative initiative examines how policing affects Latinx families in the region. Support from CLACLS contributed to a partnership with Alianza DV Services in Holyoke, creating an opportunity to conduct a community needs assessment as part of a broader, DPH-funded violence prevention initiative.