William T. Grant Scholars Program

Overview

The William T. Grant Scholars Program supports career development for promising early-career researchers. The program funds five-year research and mentoring plans that significantly expand researchers’ expertise in new disciplines, methods, and content areas.

Applicants should have a track record of conducting high-quality research and an interest in pursuing a significant shift in their trajectories as researchers. We recognize that early-career researchers are rarely given incentives or support to take measured risks in their work, so this award includes a mentoring component, as well as a supportive academic community.

The Foundation supports research in two distinct focus areas: 
1) Reducing inequality in youth outcomes, and 
2) Improving the use of research evidence in policy and practice. 
Proposed research must address questions that align with one of these areas.

Reducing Inequality
In this focus area, we fund research studies that examine programs, policies, or practices to reduce inequality in the academic, social, behavioral, or economic outcomes of young people ages 5–25 in the United States, along dimensions of race, ethnicity, economic standing, sexual or gender minority status (e.g., LGBTQ+ youth), language minority status, or immigrant origins.

Our research interests center on studies that examine ways to reduce inequality in youth outcomes. We welcome descriptive studies that clarify mechanisms for reducing inequality or elucidate how or why a specific program, policy, or practice operates to reduce inequality. We also welcome intervention studies that examine attempts to reduce inequality.

Recognizing that findings about programs and practices that reduce inequality will have limited societal impact until the structures that create inequality in the first place have been transformed, the Foundation is particularly interested in research to uproot systemic racism and the structural foundations of inequality that limit the life chances of young people.

We invite studies from a range of disciplines, fields, and methods, and we encourage investigations into various youth serving systems, including justice, housing, child welfare, mental health, and education.
Read the application guidelines PDF for a detailed explanation of our research interests in this area.

Improving the Use of Research Evidence
In this focus area, we support research studies that examine strategies to improve the use of research evidence in ways that benefit young people ages 5-25 in the United States. We seek proposals for studies that advance theory and build empirical knowledge on ways to improve the use of research evidence by policymakers, public agency leaders, organizational managers, intermediaries, community organizers, and other decision-makers that generally shape youth-serving systems in the United States.

While an extensive body of knowledge provides a rich understanding of specific conditions that foster the use of research evidence, we lack robust, validated strategies for cultivating them. What is required to create structural and social conditions that support research use? What infrastructure is needed, and what will it look like? What supports and incentives foster research use? And, ultimately, how do youth outcomes fare when research evidence is used? This is where new research can make a difference

Our research interests in this focus area center on studies that examine strategies to improve the use, usefulness, and impact of research evidence in ways that benefit young people ages 5-25 in the United States. We welcome impact studies that test strategies for improving research use as well as whether improving research use leads to improved youth outcomes. We also welcome descriptive studies that reveal the strategies, mechanisms, or conditions for improving research use. Finally, we welcome measurement studies that explore how to construct and implement valid and reliable measures of research use.
Read the application guidelines PDF for a detailed explanation of our research interests in this area.

Limitation: ASU may submit only one (1) application per College to the sponsoring organization.
Notice: Mentor and Reference Letters are due June 10, 2026, 3 PM ET
Notice: ASU Limited Submissions will run this opportunity with a rapid review system to better accommodate the sponsor's immediate timeline.

Eligibility
Applicants must be nominated by their institutions. Major divisions of an institution (e.g., College of Arts and Sciences, Medical School) may nominate only one applicant each year. In addition to the eligibility criteria below, deans and directors of those divisions should refer to the Review Criteria to aid them in choosing their nominees. Applicants of any discipline are eligible. Applicants must have received their doctorate within seven years of submitting their application. We calculate this by adding seven to the year the doctorate was conferred.

Award: Award recipients are designated as William T. Grant Scholars. Each year, four to six Scholars are selected. Each Scholar receives exactly $425,000 over five years, including up to 7.5% indirect costs.

Scholars may apply for an additional award to mentor junior researchers of color. [See website for full details.]