This academic year, the Office of Campus Outreach Initiatives has up to $150,000 for Faculty Outreach Grants (FOG), said Joe Castro, executive director of the unit, which serves as the operational arm of the Chancellor’s Outreach Advisory Board.

This money will fund faculty- or staff-inspired programs that serve "critical educational needs of our regional K-12 students" in Santa Barbara and Ventura counties and "help to increase the diversity of UCSB’s students," explained Castro.

He noted that an earlier FOG initiative, the Academic Writing Partnership, won a 2004 Golden Bell Award from the California School Board Association for innovation.

Proposals for FOG-supported activities, which may be on a one-time or continuing (multi-year) basis, are due by 5 p.m. on Jan. 28, 2005. The projects may start as early as next April 1 or as late as
Sept. 1.

Application details or questions can be addressed to Castro at x3105, or at joe.castro@coi.ucsb.edu.

Award-winning proposals will be announced "in early March," according to Ken Millett and Sally Holbrook, faculty chairs of the advisory board and its FOG committee, respectively.

"It is anticipated that project awards will range from $2,000 to $20,000," they added, though a justified project of up to $40,000 would be considered.

Though campus department and program staff, as well as faculty, are encouraged to apply, the primary investigator "must be a member of the Academic Senate at UCSB," state the FOG eligibility criteria.

Another goal of the FOG program, which began in 1999-2000, is to assist what UC now calls "academic preparation" in selected partner schools. For UCSB, these currently include six high schools and their feeder schools in the two counties.