Skip To Top Navigation Skip To Content Skip To Footer

McCaleb Initiative: 2025 Competition

Announcement

A campus-wide competition for up to a $5,000 grant for the best proposal from a faculty-student team “In Search of Peace”

Through funding from the Initiative for Peace established by Kenneth and Margaret McCaleb, a competition is open to two-person teams of one faculty member and one student who will undertake a project to examine causes of war, consequences of war, peacekeeping efforts, and/or the desires of people for peace.

Each team must consist of one full-time faculty member from any Missouri Southern department and one full-time Missouri Southern student who will be returning to Missouri Southern next fall. The student’s major is unimportant. The team must develop the proposal together and must agree to follow through on the proposal if selected. The winning team must complete all stories and compile all photographs for the project in the summer of 2025, prior to the beginning of classes in August.

The submission must be a detailed written proposal that indicates how these goals would be accomplished:

  1. The project must result in 8-12 carefully edited articles for publication in The Chart during the fall semester. The topic must be in the general area of “The Search for Peace” and may choose any approach the team agrees upon. Photographs and other illustrations will be required for publication. The submission must outline the proposed articles and photographs or illustrations in detail.
  2. The proposal will be detailed in the research that will be undertaken and in how the project will be carried out. Travel within the United States and/or abroad may be included, and a proposed itinerary and budget for travel must be included. If interviews are proposed, there must be some indication of the probable success of securing these interviews, such as emails from the proposed sources. A detailed budget must be included, whether travel is involved or not. Note: Please do not include equipment purchases in the budget.
  3. Travel to countries where the State Department has issued Travel Advisories is not permissible. See https://travel.state.gov/content/travel/en/traveladvisories/traveladvisories.html for an up-to-date list.

Teams must be aware that the final product must have broad appeal to potential readers and must conform to style requirements of The Chart.

The submission will include:

  1. A title page giving the name of the project and the names, identifications, and email addresses of the team members.
  2. An introductory essay explaining the reason for the team and the desired result the team has in completing the project proposed.
  3. The research question(s) to be addressed by the project. Past research provides a basis for creating new research questions. Do not select a problem that is too vast to investigate meaningfully. Instead, select a more narrow focus. (W.R. Borg’s and M.D. Gall’s Educational Research: An Introduction is a great resource.)
  4. A review of the literature and a selected bibliography, to show that the team has thoroughly researched the project. A review of the literature should answer these questions:
    1. What do I know after reviewing the literature?
    2. How does the new research question(s) relate to what I already know?
  5. The detailed proposal (including the stories to be written) with an itemized budget.
  6. Evidence (such as emails) that the proposed interviews will be granted by the necessary sources. Ideally, the emails will be to and from the student member of the team rather than to and from the faculty member.
  7. A detailed itinerary for the proposed trip.
  8. A résumé or vita of each team member demonstrating the qualifications of each to carry out the project. The résumé or vita should include full contact information. (The faculty member’s vita should be limited to three pages.)
  9. Proposal must be paginated, with page numbers placed in the upper right-hand corner.

Three bound copies of the proposal must be submitted by Monday, March 10, 2025, to:

Chad Stebbins, Director
Institute of International Studies
Webster Hall 337-A

Please notify Dr. Stebbins of your intent to apply for a McCaleb grant by Friday, February 21, 2025.