Documents submitted for a GSRC Travel Grant application should address each component of the submission request, and clearly show information needed to verify the document—such as your name, the name of the conference, email addresses of sender/recipient, dates, etc.
For a full description of all guidelines and representative examples, please visit our Travel Grant Document page.
At this time, the GSRC Travel Grant is only available to doctoral candidates. A doctoral candidate is a doctoral student who has passed an exam or series of exams (typically called a “Preliminary Doctoral Exam”) and is eligible to enroll in Dissertation hours. This process involves the student’s advisor and department chair completing paperwork that formally declares their doctoral candidacy.
Students who have not reached candidacy, or whose academic programs do not contain a candidacy component, cannot receive the GSRC Travel Grant at this time.
In most cases, the ”proof” of applying for funding from your department should be an email sent to a travel representative or your advisor with an inquiry about the possibility of receiving travel funding. In some cases, it may be a screenshot of an application that you submitted to someone in your department. Departments offer funding in various ways, so we encourage students with questions about this component to check with their advisor and departmental staff.
In instances in which department administrators send a blanket email to all graduate students notifying them that travel funding will be provided to them, GSRC Travel Grant applicants should include in their application an email sent to their travel representative or other departmental staff showing that they intend to use those funds for this trip.
If your department has no funding available for graduate student travel, or you’ve exhausted the funding available to you, that’s ok! Just include proof of that in your application. (For example, an email from a travel representative, advisor, or department chair, confirming this lack of funding.)
If you are still uncertain about your situation, email us at gsrc@fsu.edu and we’ll help!
The GSRC Travel Grant was created to supply additional funds for doctoral candidates to travel to conferences and performances—not to replace any existing sources like COGS or departmental funds. To ensure that those funds remain the primary source of travel funding, they are always used first, in their entirety, before the GSRC grant can be used. Occasionally, the existing sources of funding will cover a large portion of a student’s travel, so the amount that the GSRC needs to cover is less than the amount that was awarded. In those instances, money that was not used is rolled back into the GSRC pool. Students are not eligible to apply for a second travel grant, even for the unused portion of a prior award.
No. Doctoral candidates are currently allowed to receive one travel grant per fiscal year (July 1 – June 30). This grant is not set up to allow students to receive multiple travel grants totaling $1,000 or to use a single grant for multiple trips.
For this reason, students who want to maximize their use of funding on multiple conferences should plan strategically. Since GSRC requires other sources to be used in their entirety before our travel grant can be used, students may want to use the entirety of their other sources on their first conference and then apply for the GSRC travel grant for their second conference.
The GSRC Travel Grant provides money for travel expenses related to academic conferences and creative events. This money is state-funded, which means that we have to follow state law and FSU travel policy. While we can generally reimburse the cost of travel (air and/or ground transportation), lodging, meals, and incidental charges like parking, there are some limits and processes that travelers must follow. For a full list of coverage and guidelines, see the FSU Travel page. Note that different funding sources (e.g., private donations through the FSU Foundation) have different amounts of flexibility, and what may be allowed on one funding source may not be allowed by the GSRC funding (and vice-versa). If you have specific questions about whether something is allowed by another funding source, please contact your department’s travel representative.
If you are employed at FSU (including GA/RA/TA employment, or other part-time or full-time work), you must book your flight through Concur if you intend for any part of that flight to be reimbursed by the GSRC. If you have already booked a flight for your travel outside of Concur, talk with your travel representative to see if there are any other funding opportunities available to you that are not bound to this policy.
While you may share a hotel room with a colleague, GSRC is only allowed to reimburse a traveler who appears on the hotel invoice, per FSU Travel. In practice, this means that if you share a hotel room, you must ensure that your name appears on the invoice in order for us to reimburse you all or part of the cost. Under no circumstances can we reimburse lodging if the traveler’s name is not on the invoice, even if a documented paper trail exists that shows electronic transactions of funds (e.g., Zillow or Venmo payments).
Generally speaking, Per Diem should only be claimed on your last day of travel, whereas Daily Meal Allowance is claimed on all other days, including the first day of travel. Travelers are never permitted to claim Daily Meal Allowance and Per Diem on the same day.
Daily Meal Allowance provides money for general meals, and reimburses a fixed amount based on the timing of your travel. (For travel within the U.S., this is always $6 for breakfast if your travel begins before 6:00 a.m. and extends beyond 8:00 a.m.; $11 for lunch if your travel begins before 12:00 p.m. and extends beyond 2:00 p.m.; and $19 for dinner, if you travel begins before 6:00 p.m. and extends beyond 8:00 p.m. Amounts differ for international travel, based on location). If your hotel provides a continental breakfast, or if any meals are included in the cost of your conference, you may not claim that meal, even if you don’t take it.
Per Diem reimbursement is allowed on your last day of travel (e.g., the day you leave your hotel and arrive back at your home) and provides $20 per quarter of the day (12:00 a.m. – 5:59 a.m.; 6:00 a.m. – 11:59 a.m.; 12:00 p.m. – 5:59 p.m.; 6:00 p.m. – 11:59 p.m.) until the time you arrive back at your home location.
Note that these amounts and times are set in Florida law. The GSRC is unable to reimburse amounts greater than those listed, nor may we reimburse you for a specific meal based on the amount you paid for it, even if you provide a receipt. Travelers wishing to claim meal totals will need to talk with their travel representatives to determine if any other grants that are funding their travel can cover amounts greater than the state limit.