Reporting Requirements

All undergraduate and graduate students who receive Franco Institute 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). Specific grants may have their own additional requirements.

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. Annual Theme Grant, Graduate Working Group, and Graduate Creative and Performing Arts final reports are due within 30 days of project completion. If you have any questions or problems with this process, contact Therese Blacketor (tblacket@nd.edu), Franco Institute Student Programs 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 projects.

Frame study

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

Design

What questions did you 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 Franco Institute 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.

Franco Institute Acknowledgment

Any publication, public recital, exhibition, or other public display of the student’s work must include an appropriate acknowledgment of Franco Institute funding or a 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], Franco Family Institute for Liberal Arts and the Public Good, College of Arts & Letters, University of Notre Dame.