Supporting Structures: key features
Supporting Structures helps participating colleges to maintain their strength in STEM and to enhance their efforts in STEM for the future.
It offers a highly integrative and structured way to pursue deepening STEM research while attending to the big questions and the wider concerns of the community.
Its strategy and vision is to expand research and teaching in STEM through the forging of strategic relationships.
1. Enhancing research opportunities for early career STEM faculty
Salary and research support for one academic year of half-time research leave for two or three pre-tenure (or equivalent) faculty members (Faculty Fellows).
Proposed research will be undertaken in partner laboratories or research groups at R1 universities or comparable high-level research institutions.
Proposed research should capitalise on research infrastructure at the partner university or research institution that is not normally available at the applying institution.
Priority will be given to Faculty Fellows conducting fundamental research in physics, chemistry, astronomy and planetary science, biology and zoology, geology, climatology and earth sciences, experimental psychology and neuroscience.
2. Participating in SCIO’s formation program in Christianity and science
Monthly webinars for 6 or 9 faculty members from each grantee institution (Faculty Fellow plus two additional faculty from social sciences and humanities per year for two or three years) on a broad range of science, religion, and society topics, led by major scholars in relevant fields.
Faculty Fellows’ participation in the Oxford-based Supporting Structures Summer Workshop in 2023 and 2024.
Mentoring for Faculty Fellows on science, religion, and society in the specific religious and cultural context of the grantee institution, provided by local theological/biblical faculty mentors.
3. Promoting campus-wide engagement with STEM and science, religion and society concerns
Funding for a senior administrator to attend a consultation meeting focused on developing and enhancing offices of research and grant support at CCCU colleges and universities.
Funding for the applying institution’s president to participate in a presidential roundtable in Oxford on STEM and science, religion, and society in summer 2024.
Funding to build or expand student science, religion, and society clubs.
Funding to support undergraduate STEM research.
4. Enhancing public engagement with science, religion and society beyond the campus
Funding for programs designed to enhance outreach to campus stakeholders (e.g., alumni, students’ families, donors, denominational and church supporters, others in the immediate geographic region) through public events.
Funding to stage on campus the new play Fire from Heaven: Michael Faraday and the Dawn of the Electrical Age (presented by the same creative team which created Mr Darwin’s Tree, which has performed some 25 times on CCCU campuses and at two CCCU national conferences).
5. Providing support for enhancing diversity in STEM faculty
Funding to adopt best practices for attracting and retaining diverse faculty members in STEM.
Financial package awarded to grantee institutions
| 2-year grant | 3-year grant | Benefit |
| $60,000 | $90,000 | Salary support for Faculty Fellows during research leave (maximum $30,000/Fellow, 1 Fellow/year) |
| $12,000 | $18,000 | Research support for Faculty Fellows (maximum $6,000/Fellow) |
| $14,000 | $21,000 | STEM public engagement fund |
| $8,000 | $12,000 | Diversity in STEM development fund |
| $7,000 | $10,500 | STEM undergraduate research support |
| $3,000 | $4,500 | Undergraduate club support |
| $3,720* | $5,580* | Course materials for faculty members participating in monthly webinars |
| $11,256* | $11,256* | Costs associated with staging the touring Michael Faraday play |
| $10,184* | $15,276* | Local costs associated with Faculty Fellows’ participation in two Supporting Structures Summer Workshops in Oxford, UK |
| $3,887* | $3,887* | Local costs for Presidents’ Roundtable in Oxford, UK |
| $380* | $380* | Travel costs for senior administrator’s participation in office of grants and research consultation meeting (50 CCCU institutions in total to participate) |
| $133,427 | $192,379 | Total |
* Funds managed by SCIO, rather than by grantee institutions.
Required contributions from grantee institutions
| 2-year grant | 3-year grant | Required contribution |
| $8,000 | $12,000 | Additional research support for Faculty Fellows (minimum $4,000/Fellow) |
| Two round-trip flights to the UK for each Faculty Fellow to attend the Supporting Structures Summer Workshop in Oxford (summer 2023, summer 2024) | ||
| One round-trip flight to the UK to attend Presidents’ Roundtable in Oxford (summer 2024) | ||
| Costs associated with managing grant | ||
| Arrange for senior faculty members at the Faculty Fellow’s campus to provide occasional mentoring in conjunction with the science, religion and society seminars in order to help situate the Faculty Fellow in the institution’s own particular theological and cultural context. |
