CCCC Research Initiative Grant

CCCC Research Initiative Grant

Status: ACTIVE
Funder: Conference on College Composition and Communication
Amount: Up to US $10,000
Last Updated: July 18, 2025

Summary

The CCCC Research Initiative invites proposals that explore critical challenges in literacy, communication, rhetoric, and writing. This initiative emphasizes evidence-based research to inform public policy discussions. Proposals should target both scholarly and public audiences, focusing on topics like social justice in language practices and the assessment of writing. Researchers are encouraged to employ diverse methodologies and address the impact of their findings on educational practices. Funding is available for projects lasting up to two years.

Overview

CCCC’s Research Initiative speaks to our belief that bold, creative research furthers the organization’s mission to advocate for broad and evolving definitions of literacy, communication, rhetoric, and writing (including multimodal discourse, digital communication, and diverse language practices) that emphasize the value of these activities to empower individuals and communities. CCCC promotes intellectual and pedagogical freedom and ethical scholarship and communication. To this end, CCCC sponsors research that produces knowledge about language, literacy, communication, rhetoric, and the teaching, assessment, and technologies of writing. That research has never been more needed as policymakers take up questions related to our members’ curricula and students. Among the most important resources CCCC membership can bring to bear upon public conversations is the sustained, substantial, and informed research that has been, and continues to be, produced by our scholarship. Now is the time for our members’ evidence-based research to be present in discourses that will inform public policy. We call for proposals to investigate key challenges faced by literacy, communication, rhetoric, and writing instructors and administrators in their classrooms and programs. The initiative also asks recipients to clearly address the impact their research might have on these conversations, conveying the implications of their work in at least two final products: one that is addressed to a scholarly audience of researchers and teachers in the field, and one that is addressed to a specifically identified more public audience. Particular topics and areas of interest are those that advance the mission and vision of CCCC, which include but are not limited to the following broad areas: Research that produces knowledge about language, literacy, communication, rhetoric, and the teaching, assessment, and technologies of writing at the postsecondary level and beyond Social, racial, and linguistic justice and counterstory as research method and genre in approaches to instruction in rhetoric, language, and literacy  Writing in organizations, communities, and/or cultures Transfer of writing ability across contexts Disciplinarity of writing studies and composition, including critical praxis of the discipline’s growth, development of teachers or researchers, and professionalization or mentoring of undergraduate or graduate students joining the discipline Historiography Assessment of writing and literacy Development of writers or writing abilities  Material and working conditions for writing instruction and their influence on teaching and learning We invite proposals for research that employ diverse perspectives and methodologies, including historical, archival, rhetorical, qualitative, quantitative, ethnographic, and textual.

Eligibility

You can learn more about this opportunity by visiting the funder's website. Researchers may submit only one research proposal per award cycle for either the CCCC Research Initiative or the CCCC Emergent Researcher Award—researchers cannot submit to both.CCCC research grant recipients may not apply for CCCC research funding in the three years following the initial grant year (e.g., if the initial funding term begins in 2024, researchers may not apply again until the 2027 award cycle).Proposals are expected to last up to two years but can run for shorter periods of time.Equipment costs are allowable if justified. You must be a member of this organization to apply for this award - become a member. The principal investigators of each proposal must be members of CCCC at the time of proposal submission.

Ineligibility

Please note that this grant may not be used to pay indirect costs (such as overhead or other costs associated with administration).Grant may not be used for travel to the CCCC Annual Convention.