The Graduate School - Conference Presentation Travel Grants

Travel funds are made available on a competitive basis to encourage graduate students to present at a professional meeting or conference. In order to receive travel funding, the student must be presenting at a conference.

Semester	Application Due Date
Fall 2019	September 18, 2019
	November 6, 2019
Spring 2020	February 19, 2020
	April 15, 2020

1.)    All materials are submitted to the Graduate School in person or via email to gstravelapp@wku.edu.
2.)    After the committee meeting has been held, the students will receive an email notification informing them whether or not they have been awarded funds. Within this email, the dollar amount will be stated.
3.)    Once students have received the award email, they are able to spend their travel funds.
4.)    When the travel has been completed, the students must submit:
        a. Travel Report
        b. Travel Expense Voucher (https://intranet.wku.edu/php/prod/forms/travel/)
        c. Copies of all receipts
        d. A thesis or a final project report is also required if your funding was provided to conduct research

The following documents are REQUIRED when applying for a Travel Grant. Failure to submit the required documents will result in an incomplete application and the Committee will not review the application. ALL REQUIRED MATERIALS SHOULD BE SUBMITTED TO gstravelapp@wku.edu.

REQUIRED MATERIALS:

1.)    Travel Grant Application Form
        a. FOUR signatures are required: Student, Advisor, Department Head, and College Dean
        a. NOTE: Fellowship students must use this form to apply
2.)    Formal Budget Form
        a. Further guidance as to how to fill out the Formal Budget Form is included in the link listed above.
3.)    Pre-Travel Statement
        a. Items that should be included in the Pre-Travel Statement include:
            i. A copy of the abstract to be presented
            ii. What will likely be learned
            iii. What will be achieved
            iv. The relevance of the conference presentations to the research being undertaken at WKU
            v. A discussion of how the travel is necessary to gain access to specialized materials, instrumentation, or information, etc.
          b. The Pre-Travel Statement is typically a 2 – 3 page narrative explaining why the travel is necessary and addresses each of the items listed above.
4.)    Formal Acceptance Notification from the Conference

NOTE: All application materials are to be sent to gstravelapp@wku.edu. If materials are sent to an alternative email address, your application will not be reviewed by the committee.

• ALL MATERIALS MUST BE SUBMITTED TO gstravelapp@wku.edu.

• Incomplete applications will be returned. If applications are not submitted to the proper email address, the application will not be considered by the committee.

• Students CANNOT receive more than 2 grants per academic year.

• Students must apply for the travel funds following the process listed above. If a faculty member is taking a group of more than 10 they can submit one application with a list of all students attending the trip attached to the application packet. 

• The department and the college must put the amount that they will be providing the student. Any application that does not have this information will be sent back to the department.

• Once the student has been awarded the funds a transfer will be made to the department. Transfers are made on the 15th and 30th of each month. These dates are not negotiable. The department will then pay for the amount that the Graduate School awarded for the student's travel on their procard and save all receipts to submit after the travel.

• Once the travel has been completed the department is to submit receipts for anything they paid for relating to the students travel (hotel, flight tickets, registration fees, etc.) Any receipts, the Banner printout of the procard, and a Travel Report must be included. If the department has to submit a travel voucher to the travel department on behalf of the funds that they were awarding the student please do not use the Graduate School index and/or commodity code on the voucher.
        - Link to access the travel voucher form.
        - Link to Travel Report form.