Reporting Requirements

All undergraduate and graduate students who receive ISLA funding must submit a final report that meets the following guidelines. In some cases, a donor thank-you note will also be required (see details below). See ISLA Acknowledgement section for how to credit ISLA in any public displays of your work. 

Final Report

Following project completion, all research grant recipients must submit a 1-2 page final report. All reports should be written in a style accessible to a non-specialist reader. Awardees also must upload at least two photographs (one of them can be a headshot) of themselves conducting their research or other digital materials relevant to their funded research/project.

Students should submit their final reports, photos, and donor thank-you notes (if applicable) using either the Undergraduate Confirmation of Project Completion Form or the Graduate Student Confirmation of Project Completion Form. Final reports for undergraduates are due in April and early September. Graduate student GSRA awards are due six months after award disbursement and Themed Grant award final reports are due within 30 days of project completion. If you have any questions or problems with this process, contact Therese Blacketor, ISLA Student Program Coordinator.  

Kennedy Scholars must submit a copy of their senior thesis and a donor thank-you note to Alice Tyrell and Charlotte Parkyn at the end of the academic year.

Final reports should address the following:

Timeframe 

List where and when your research took place.

Nature of Research

Examples include (but are not limited to) archival or library research, human behavior study, fine arts or performance project.

Frame Study 

Provide context for research or artistic work and present importance of your project in light of existing research or artistic works. 

Design 

What questions did you wish to explore? How did you envision the project advancing your degree/career? For projects in the social sciences, please use this section to describe topics such as how participants were recruited and what conditions and procedures were established and followed. For art projects, describe your inspiration for the project. 

Findings 

What questions were you able to answer (or not answer) and why (or why not)? What results did you obtain? For social sciences, describe hypotheses, statistics, and outcomes. 

Relevance 

What were the important takeaways for you, your work, and your field more broadly? How does your project speak to contemporary issues, needs, or fields outside of your own? How does your research address big questions beyond the specific parameters of your project? Think about how you would explain the project, and why it matters, to a person with little or no knowledge of your field.

Need

What did ISLA funding enable you to achieve that you would not have been able to otherwise? Include specific tasks (e.g., compensating survey respondents, travel costs), as well as broader endeavors (e.g., journal publication, dissertation completion, winning larger external awards).

Future Directions 

What is the project's current status, and when do you expect its completion? Did the project change as a result of your funded research (or other factors), and if so, how? How do you envision the project’s ultimate trajectory? For social science projects, relate results to existing research (replicated? extended? contradictory?) Discuss limitations and future directions of research. 

Thank You Note to Donor

If your award was funded by a particular donor, you must write a thank-you note to that donor in addition to submitting an electronic copy of your final report and senior thesis (when appropriate). Thank-you notes should be at least two to three paragraphs long, describe in detail how the grant funding helped your research, and express your sincere appreciation for the donor's funding.

ISLA Acknowledgment

Any publication, public recital, exhibition, or other public display of the student’s work must include an appropriate acknowledgment of ISLA’s Undergraduate Research Opportunity Program, Graduate Research Opportunity Program, or donor-specific fund. Although no one format is required, we recommend the following:

This [research, etc.] is made possible in part by support from the [grant program name], Institute for Scholarship in the Liberal Arts, College of Arts and Letters, the University of Notre Dame.