Support for Research On Campus

Wesleyan has a wide range of institutional support for faculty research.  If you have any questions related to research support, your best point-person will be your department Chair, who should be able to help you navigate our different resources.  Below are some of the most useful campus resources to support faculty research.

  • The Library. Wesleyan’s library system has a number different collections on campus that can be used for research as well as teaching.  The “one search” function on the home page can help you find any book or article our large collection.  Our library is also part of the regional CTW consortium, which gives faculty access to numerous other resources.  Our Inter-Library Loan office can get faculty access to many digital resources (articles, ebooks, scanned chapters) within a day or two, and most book volumes within a week.  Finally, every academic unit on campus has a knowledgeable library liaison who can help you find additional resources.
  • Shapiro Center for Writing provides resources for faculty as writers.
  • WesScholar is Wesleyan’s most popular digital repository for faculty scholarship.
  • The Conversation is a nonprofit news organization that works with universities to bring academic research to the public. Many Wesleyan faculty have published research-based articles with The Conversation that then get re-published in countless additional news outlets.
  • The Institutional Review Board (IRB) supports student and faculty research by ensuring that all university-affiliated research complies with its single, comprehensive standard for the protection for human subjects in research.  All faculty and students using human subjects for the research must clear their projects with IRB before proceeding.
  • The Quantitative Analysis Center (QAC) supports quantitative analysis across the curriculum. Its talented staff offers consultation services for faculty exploring new quantitative projects in their research as well as their teaching.
  • Wesleyan Center for the Arts (CFA) serves as the organizational center of creative arts on campus. It can serve faculty research in a number of ways including production support, facilitating artistic collaborations, and through the Creative Campus Initiative.
  • The Center for the Humanities acts as a hub for many humanities-based intellectual and cultural activities on campus. It also offers fellowships to groups of faculty to support collaborative research around a common theme. 
  • The College of the Environment (COE) serves as an interdisciplinary center for research related to the environment. It offers annual fellowships for faculty so they can participate in the COE Think Tank. 
  • The Allbritton Center for the Study of Public Life is the hub of civic engagement on campus. It supports faculty in a number of ways:
    • Collaborative research grants
    • Jewett Center for Community Partnerships can assist faculty in finding collaborators and research partners in the local community
  • Academic Affairs-funded Research Workshops--Modeled on the more traditional “book workshop,” Faculty Research Workshops are intended to provide tenure-track junior faculty with the opportunity to meet, network, and discuss their scholarship or creative work with two or three eminent experts in their particular field.  Each faculty member has the opportunity for one workshop before tenure, and we hope to prioritize the pre-tenure faculty whose sabbaticals were interrupted by COVID.  Faculty members will work together with their academic dean and departmental mentors to submit a one-page proposal outlining these details to the division dean in the semester before the workshop is to take place. Workshops are conducted remotely (on Zoom or another platform), and the structure of the workshop is completely customizable to suit the needs of the faculty member.  Academic Affairs will pay honoraria to the evaluators on the basis of the amount of material evaluated.
  • Faculty Research Communities—Every semester and over the summer the CFCD organizes faculty research communities to facilitate collegiality, promote productive writing, and create venues where faculty can provide mutual support and accountability. The communities take on diverse configurations, some are division-specific while others are cross-divisions, some bring faculty at a similar career stage together while others contain faculty from diverse backgrounds.  You can join for one session, or your group can continue meeting.