Catalyze Awards
Faculty grantee Natalia Ocampo-Peñuela in the field.
Research in the social sciences applies a diverse range of rigorous methods and powerful tools to better understand key societal challenges. This work can create actionable solutions to major social and environmental problems, but currently, too many promising projects don’t have the financial support they need to get off the ground. We aim to change that.
Our Catalyze Awards grant program supports faculty in UC Santa Cruz’s Social Sciences Division with their innovative efforts to foster more equitable and sustainable social futures. We offer grants ranging between $500 and $18,500 through three funding tracks that are designed to help faculty either establish, develop, or apply collaborative and transformative research and community-centered inquiry. Proposed projects must contribute broadly to the goals of the institute to advance system solutions for equitable societies, resilient democracies, and environmental justice.
Award Types
Seed Grants
($500 to $3,000)
Seed Grants facilitate the exploration and development of innovative new research ideas. Funding helps bring together scholars, experts, and community members for interdisciplinary communication, engagement, and collaboration that leads to big breakthroughs. Examples of activities might include thematic symposia, lightning talks, convenings of small groups of interested collaborators, research clusters, open forums, lectures, film screenings, and workshops.
Sprout Grants
($2,500 to $18,500)
Sprout Grants support crucial initial stages of the research process, such as pilot research, data collection, literature reviews, data analysis, and developing larger proposals for additional external funding. These grants provide scholars with one year of financial support to intensify early research efforts, fund student contributions, and successfully move a promising project or research plan forward to implementation. Interdisciplinary collaboration and community engagement are highly encouraged.
Harvest Grants ($500-$1,800)
Harvest Grants help publicize completed research, connecting researchers with relevant stakeholders to help boost research visibility, enhance interdisciplinary collaboration, and promote application of findings. Examples of funded activities might include book launch events, public policy forums, development of online resources and public toolkits, travel to talks or conferences, and building new collaborations based on research findings.
Awardees making a difference
Teaching climate change more holistically
Most high school science classes address only the technical aspects of climate change, missing opportunities to explain the interconnections between social, political, and scientific dimensions. Assistant Professor of Education Emily Reigh used Seed Grant funding to envision future directions for learning by gathering teachers, students, and environmental justice advocates from Pajaro Valley alongside climate and education researchers. The initial workshop spawned several new collaborative projects, including developing curriculum on local efforts to address air quality issues and planning convenings of science and ethnic studies teachers.
Guiding ethical technology development
Emerging fields like artificial intelligence, genomics, and neuroscience are poised to have big impacts on society. But they also carry a high risk of unintended consequences. Sociology Professor Jenny Reardon, an expert in science ethics, used Sprout Grant funding to generate initial background research on these issues for a National Science Foundation grant application. She successfully won $399,000 in NSF funding to study how scientists working on high-stakes technologies are partnering with ethicists and social scientists to consider societal implications. Her work aims to establish best practices for these types of collaborations.
Advancing global human rights work
In order to better support human rights efforts in Muslim-majority nations, Politics Professor Mark Fathi Massoud argues that international advocacy organizations need to understand and acknowledge the powerful role Islam plays in civic life. He used Harvest Grant funding to distribute his research on this subject to scholars, activists, government officials, and libraries across Africa, Asia, Europe, and North America. This helped earn him a series of award recognitions, speaking engagements, and a closed session with resident representatives of the United Nations Development Program to discuss how to end discrimination against women.
About the program
Funding cycle
The 2025-26 Catalyze Cohort has been funded through December 31, 2026. We anticipate accepting the next round of Catalyze applications to be due in early 2027. The Institute for Social Transformation provides Catalyze Awards on an annual basis according to the following yearly schedule.
| Application period | Awards announced | Funding available | Project Period |
| November–January | February-March | June | July–December |
Eligibility
Please consider applying for a Catalyze Award if you meet the following requirements:
- Individual or collaborative proposals are welcome.
- At least one member of the core project team must be a senate faculty member from the UC Santa Cruz Social Sciences Division.
- Any employee eligible for a PI status without requiring an exception of policy. Lecturers, researchers, and graduate students from the division can apply in collaboration with a senate faculty member from the social sciences.
- Faculty affiliated with the interdivisional Coastal Science and Policy Program or the Global and Community Health Program should specifically describe how their project builds upon or contributes to social science research.
- Projects must conclude within one year.
- Applicants may apply to only one Catalyze or Emerging Scholar opportunity per year.
Selection criteria
Eligible proposals will be reviewed by the members of the Institute’s Executive Board according to the following general criteria:
- Relevance to the core goals and commitments of the Institute
- Clarity of proposed activities
- Strength of rationale
- Appropriateness of project scope and scale
- Adequacy of the budget
- Priority is given to early career faculty
- Priority is given to faculty who have not received a Catalyze grant in the past two years.
- Priority is given to projects that cross boundaries between academic disciplines, units, or campuses or that engage communities, locally, regionally, nationally, or internationally.
- Priority is given to projects that translate research into meaningful next steps (i.e. new funding opportunities, publications, op-eds, community trainings, policy briefs, etc.)
- We encourage collaborations that include students or faculty of different ranks.
Allowable and prohibited costs
When planning your budget, activities and expenses should align with the goals of each award type. The following list of allowable costs offers a few common examples of expense types associated with our grants. Prohibited costs are not allowed on any award type.
Allowable costs
- Summer GSR salary and benefits or support for graduate student assistants during non-academic terms (i.e. winter, spring, or summer break)
- Compensation (i.e. honoraria) for research and community partners, faculty outside of the UC system, or other non-UC collaborators
- Undergraduate research assistance (however, we strongly encourage faculty to apply for the institute’s Building Belonging Program if this is a primary need)
- Travel, lodging, and per diem for the applicant, student, or participants contributing to the project
- Supplies that are integral to the project/event (must not be a significant proportion of the budget)
- Publishing, books, or offprints for distribution to a targeted audience of relevant scholars and/or stakeholders
- Media services or instructional support fees
- Data access fees and software licenses (strong justification, including specific repositories and licenses, must be provided to justify the need)
- Event/meeting costs (i.e. space rental fees, working refreshments, equipment rentals, recording costs, etc.)
Prohibited costs
- Faculty course release or buyout
- Graduate student assistants during academic quarters
- UC faculty salary, including summer salary (other than student assistants)
- Alcohol
- Computers, software, or other equipment (exceptions may exist with strong justification. See COR funds.)
- Transcription (interviews, meetings, etc.)
Reporting requirements
In addition to producing any promised project deliverables, grantees will be required to report back on their progress and project outcomes in the following ways:
- Meet at least two times with Institute leadership to discuss progress, next steps, potential synergies, and any community/stakeholder engagement strategies.
- Complete a post-award survey that describes the outcomes of the project, including deviations from the proposed project, and proposed next steps (due within 30 days of the project end-date).
- Brief presentation or workshop, depending on the scope of the award
- Photo and video documentation of project activities is not required but is greatly appreciated, as it helps us communicate about the impact of your project.
Apply for Catalyze Award funding
If you’d like more information about our application process, please contact Ned LeBlond.
Seed Grants
The work supported by seed grants is expected to be open-ended, and no specific “deliverables” are required for these grants. However, proposals are expected to articulate how the activities will lead to the next steps for the development of the idea, project, or proposal, and what mechanisms will be included to ensure that this happens.
Submission requirements
- Project abstract (750 character limit)
- Project narrative including activity description, participants, and frequency (3,000 character limit)
- Project justification: articulate how the activities will lead to next steps for the development of the idea, project, or proposal (1,000 character limit)
- Relevance to the goals and commitments of the Institute (1,000 character limit)
- Budget (PDF)
- An abbreviated CV of all key personnel (5 pages maximum) (PDF)
Sprout Grants
Sprout Grant proposals must be for an existing research project with a plan to move forward. In addition to general selection criteria described above, Sprout Grants will be evaluated on the plan for moving the research project forward, including identifying and applying for additional external funding.
Submission requirements
- Project abstract (750 character limit)
- Project narrative: include project rationale, project description, significance, and impact (5,000 character limit)
- Project justification: articulate how the activities will lead to next steps for the development of the project or proposal and the expected deliverables or outcomes. Please name any external funding opportunities, if known (2,000 character limit)
- Relevance to the goals of the Institute (1,000 character limit)
- Budget (PDF)
- Description of project personnel and collaboration plan (2,000 character limit)
- Abbreviated CV of all key personnel (5 pages maximum each) (PDF)
Harvest Grants
Proposals should describe a strong plan for public outreach or stakeholder engagement around completed research and explain how such activities will help to generate real-world impact from the research findings.
Submission requirements
- Project abstract (750 character limit)
- Project narrative: include project rationale, project description, significance and impact (3,000 character limit)
- Relevance to the goals of the Institute (1,000 character limit)
- Budget (PDF)
- An abbreviated CV of all key personnel (5 pages maximum each) (PDF)